Author: Lukasz Olejniczak
Publisher:
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
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In this thesis we first show our experimental results on polarization instabilities in quantum dot (QD) lasers with vertical cavity, so called VCSELs. Their characteristics are different from what is typically observed in their QW counterparts: light that is linearly polarized close to lasing threshold becomes elliptically polarized as current is increased and then a wide region of polarization mode hopping between nonorthogonal, elliptically polarized modes sets on. Within this region the average dwell time decreases by eight orders of magnitude from seconds to nanoseconds. To our best knowledge this is the first observation of such a diversified dynamics of polarization mode hopping in a single VCSEL. We have also carried out theoretical studies of optically injected QD lasers accounting for the intradot carrier dynamics through the higher-energy excited states. We show that experimentally observed excitable pulses are complemented by self-pulsations resulting from the so-called bottleneck phenomenon. Finally, we have theoretically investigated optically injected QD laser lasing simultaneously from the ground and excited states. We show that although the external light is injected to the ground state mode alone, modulation of the relaxation time induced by injected signal can provide a gain switching mechanism leading to generation of picosecond pulses from the excited state.
