| Semiconductor lasers operating in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum (2–5 μm) are of interest for a variety of potential applications and therefore are currently the focus of intense research and development. One of the main impediments to the development of these lasers is a non-radiative loss process know as Auger recombination. It is this loss mechanism that leads to the relatively low temperature operation of these lasers. In addition to Auger recombination, there is an interest in suppressing laser which can lead to the degradation and catastrophic failure of devices at high output powers. The tendency for filament formation is suppressed in materials with small linewidth enhancement factors.; To improve the performance of these semiconductor lasers, band structure engineering techniques have been employed to the design of narrow band-gap III–V semiconductor active regions based on GaInSb/InAs superlattices. These superlattice structures are designed to have favorable material properties that allow for the suppression of Auger recombination and a reduction of the linewidth enhancement factor. In addition to Auger recombination and the linewidth enhancement factor, a number of other optical and electronic properties in these superlattice structures are also of interest, including the differential gain, differential index, Shockley-Read-Hall recombination, and in-plane carrier diffusion.; In this dissertation measurements of the optical and electronic properties in these structures conducted using two ultrafast spectroscopic techniques, time-resolved differential transmission and photogenerated transient grating is discussed. These ultrafast spectroscopic measurements are performed using 140 fs pump pulses from a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser operating at 840 nm and 170 fs probe pulses from a synchronously-pumped optical parametric oscillator which is tunable between 2.65 to 4.4 μm. The measurements show that these superlattices have favorable material properties, such as suppressed Auger recombination, large differential gains, and small linewidth enhancement factors. The experimental results are compared to the theoretical predictions based on superlattice K·p band structure calculations. Good agreement is observed between theory and experiment. |
