Optical properties of gallium arsenide-based self-assembled quantum dots and quantum dot lasers

Three-dimensional confinement of carriers eliminates the problem of thermal spreading of carriers observed in higher-dimensional systems. Uniform self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) are obtained using the spontaneous islanding of highly strained III-V semiconductors grown with standard epitaxy. Visible stimulated emission has been obtained with red-emitting AlInAs QDs in AlGaAs barriers. Continuous (CW) threshold current densities below 100A/cm2 have been measured at low temperatures and QD material gain larger than 1.7 × 104 cm−1 demonstrate good material quality. Room temperature lasing has also been observed for higher threshold current densities.; For longer wavelengths where the thermionic emission problem is less important, InAs/GaAs lasers can operate at room temperature for current densities below ∼100A/cm2 for wavelengths around 950 nm. The zero-dimensional transitions between confined electrons and holes in artificial atoms allow the observation of state-filling at relatively low level of material excitation. Lasing is observed in the upper QD shells for small gain media, and progress towards the QD ground states for longer cavity lengths. Gain may also be increased by including multiple layers of QDs in the active region.; To understand the shell structure of AlInAs/AlGaAs QDs, we present results of interband spectroscopy of single Al_0.36In_0.64As/Al _0.33Ga_0.67As self-assembled QDs. The single dot spectroscopy has been carried out at low temperature as a function of the excitation power and magnetic field up to 8 T. The emission spectra as a function of excitation power show two distinct groups of transitions which we associate with the recombination from ground and excited QD levels with a spacing of ∼70 meV. The application of magnetic field allows to identify the exciton emission as well as the emission from the bi-exciton, and charged exciton complexes with binding energies of ∼5 meV. The binding energies compare favorably with results of calculations.; Artificial molecules are studied using coupled QD ensembles and single QD spectroscopy. The coupling between the zero-dimensional states is varied by changing the distance between two layers of stacked InAs/GaAs QDs. Energy level splitting larger than 30 meV of the symmetric and anti-symmetric states of the lowest confined shell are measured and are compared to theory.