Electroabsorption and refractive index modulation induced by intersubband transitions in GaN/AlN heterostructure waveguides

We present the determination of the index variation in the GaN/AlN heterostructures related to the population/depletion of the quantum wells fundamental state leading to the intersubband (ISB) absorption variation in the spectral domain around 1.5 mu m. The experiments were performed using wide-strip waveguide structure. It is shown that the determination of the refraction index in a wide-strip structure is possible when the waveguide is multimode in the vertical direction with a small number of higher order modes. The variation of the refractive index is then deduced from the shift of the position of the beating interference maxima of different order modes. The obtained index variation with bias from complete depletion to full population of the quantum wells is around -5x10(-3). This value is similar to the typical index variation achieved in InP and is an order of magnitude higher than the index variation obtained in silicon. The remarkable feature is that maximum index variation is obtained at the wings of the ISB transition line where absorption is reduced with respect to the peak value. This index variation mechanism opens prospects for the realization of ISB phase modulators by inserting the active region in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer.