Influence of localized nitrogen states on material gain in InGaAsN/GaAs quantum-well lasers

The effect of the nature of nitrogen incorporation in the InGaAsN/GaAs quantum well system on gain is investigated. The nitrogen is considered to be either fully incorporated within the lattice or to be incorporated as a localized acceptor. In the latter case this results in conduction-band anticrossing, causing nonparabolicity. The resulting gains from the two extreme limits are compared and found to be similar. This shows that the nature of the nitrogen incorporation is not a key issue in the performance of InGaAsN/GaAs quantum well lasers for 1.3 mum applications. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.