Ultrafast pulse amplification in mode-locked vertical external-cavity surface-emitting lasers

A fully microscopic many-body Maxwell-semiconductor Bloch model is used to investigate the influence of the non-equilibrium carrier dynamics on the short-pulse amplification in mode-locked semiconductor microlaser systems. The numerical solution of the coupled equations allows for a self-consistent investigation of the light-matter coupling dynamics, the carrier kinetics in the saturable absorber and the multiple-quantum-well gain medium, as well as the modification of the light field through the pulse-induced optical polarization. The influence of the pulse-induced non-equilibrium modifications of the carrier distributions in the gain medium and the saturable absorber on the single-pulse amplification in the laser cavity is identified. It is shown that for the same structure, quantum wells, and gain bandwidth the non-equilibrium carrier dynamics lead to two preferred operation regimes: one with pulses in the (sub-) 100 fs-regime and one with multi-picosecond pulses. The recovery time of the saturable absorber determines in which regime the device operates. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.