Population and current noise in semiconductor laser junctions

Abstract

The population noise in a semiconductor laser is calculated by means of the quantum mechanical Langevin method. The resulting population noise is given by 〈δ Nc2〉=(Tc/2) (rate in+rate out)+K(¯n), whereNc is the total number of electrons in the conduction band in the active region,Tc is a relaxation time. The first expression is the usual shot noise term. The transition rates are the sum of the rates due to the light field, the pumping and the spontaneous emission. The last termK(¯ n) is caused by the light field fluctuations;¯n is the mean number of photons in the laser mode.K(¯ n) consists of two parts: a) The main part is proportional to the intensity noise of the light field, which increases below but near threshold and gets constant above threshold. b) There is a second term due to the fact that parts of the fluctuations of the population and of the light field are correlated. — The noise spectrumSI(ω) of the junction currentI is calculated for low frequencies. Beyond the usual shot noise termSI(0)=2eI, additional noise is found in and above the threshold region, a) mainly because of the fluctuations of the light field in the laser mode and b) to a small amount, because the absorption processes due to the laser photons weaken the forward current, which is carried by emission processes, while the absorption noise adds to the emission noise.