Intersubband Absorption in Terahertz Lasers Based on Optically Pumped Quantum Well Structures

We study the effects of microscopic dynamics of electrons on the intersubband optical absorption in terahertz lasers based on optically pumped quantum wells (THz-OPQW). The ensemble Monte Carlo method is used to include different electron scattering mechanisms in the calculation, so that the dependence of intersubband absorption lineshape on microscopic dynamics of electrons can be easily investigated. We find that electron-electron scattering is the dominant factor to determine the absorption linewidth. The real distributions of hot electrons are included to study the temporal changes of the spectra lineshape. Our findings show that the dependence of spectral lineshape on electron population essentially results from the electron scattering and the non-Fermi electron energy distribution.