Semiconductor laser theory with many-body effects

Abstract

A description of the electron-hole plasma of a semiconductor laser is developed that includes the many-body effects due to the Coulomb interactions. In particular, the plasma density-dependent band-gap renormalization, the broadening due to intraband scattering, and the Coulomb enhancement are included and evaluated for three- and two-dimensional semiconductor structures. Because of the short intraband scattering relaxation time one can eliminate the interband polarization adiabatically and at the same time introduce a hydrodynamic description of the intraband kinetics. From this general formulation a diffusion equation for the carrier density is derived. The resulting ambipolar diffusion coefficient decreases with the laser intensity due to the reduction of the electron drift. The present semiclassical theory is completed by the laser field equation and by the addition of Langevin fluctuations.