Impact of external carrier noise on the linewidth enhancement factor of a quantum dot distributed feedback laser

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the linewidth enhancement factor of quantum dot lasers is influenced by the external carrier transport issued from different external current sources. A model combining the rate equation and semi-classical carrier noise is used to investigate the different mechanisms leading to the above phenomenon in the context of a quantum dot distributed feedback laser. Meanwhile, the linewidth enhancement factor extracted from the optical phase modulation method shows dramatic differences when the quantum dot laser is driven by different noise-level pumps. Furthermore, the influence of external carrier noise on the frequency noise in the vicinity of the laser’s threshold current directly affects the magnitude of the linewidth enhancement factor. Simulations also investigate how the external carrier transport impacts the frequency noise and the spectral linewidth of the QD laser. Overall, we believe that these results are of paramount importance for the development of on-chip integrated ultra-low noise oscillators producing light at or below the shot-noise level.