Abstract
In Chap. 2, we describe a simple model for semiconductor gain from a free (i.e., noninteracting) electron-hole plasma. While this model provides some useful insight to the elementary physics of a semiconductor gain medium, its inadequacies show up in analyses of high-quality samples and advanced laser structures, where one clearly sees signatures of the more subtle Coulomb interaction effects among carriers. This chapter, as well as the next one, discusses approaches towards a more realistic description of the gain medium, where one includes the Coulomb interaction between charge carriers. The Coulomb potential is attractive between electron and holes (interband attraction) and repulsive for carriers in the same band (intraband repulsion) Since Coulomb interaction processes always involve more than one carrier, the resulting effects are often called many-body effects, and quantum mechanical many-body techniques have to be used to analyze these phenomena.
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References
For more details on the semiconductor Bloch equations and for further references see
Binder, R. and S. W. Koch, Progress in Quantum Electronics 19, 307 (1995).
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Discussions of the two-level Bloch equations can be found in
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We have used the integral tables in
Gradshteyn, I. S. and I. M. Rhyzhik (1980), Tables of Integals, Series and Products, Academic Press, New York.
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Chow, W.W., Koch, S.W. (1999). Coulomb Effects. In: Semiconductor-Laser Fundamentals. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03880-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03880-2_3
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