Optical-confinement-factor dependencies of the K factor, differential gain, and nonlinear gain coefficient for 1.55 mu m InGaAs/InGaAsP MQW and strained-MQW lasers

Optical-confinement-factor Gamma dependencies of the K factor, differential gain, dg/dN, and nonlinear gain coefficient epsilon , for 1.55 mu m InGaAs/InGaAsP multiple-quantum-well (MQW) and compressively strained MQW lasers, were investigated experimentally. For both MQW and strained-MQW lasers, when Gamma is increased, the K factor is reduced, dg/dN is increased, but epsilon is almost constant. These results indicate that the Gamma dependence of the K factor mainly results from a change in dg/dN, and does not result from a change in epsilon . For the strained MQW lasers, the K factor, dg/dN, and epsilon are, respectively, half as large, twice as large, and the same as those for the MQW lasers, when both types of lasers have the same Gamma (=0.05). This suggests that the strained MQW lasers with a large Gamma have a small K factor and thus are preferable for achieving large modulation bandwidths.<>