The successful fabrication of high-quality DH GaAs lasers from a simplified three-layer structure is reported. A major asset of this structure is the transparency of its final layer to recombination radiation occurring in the active layer, thus permitting the use of nondestructive photoluminescent techniques for material evaluation prior to device fabrication. In the course of photoluminescence investigations on this material the additional important observation has been made that indirect excitation (in which photocarriers are generated in the top ternary layer) has significant advantages over direct excitation (in which photocarriers are generated directly in the active layer). These include (i) the direct measurement of Al concentrations in both upper layers, (ii) the measurements of the minority-carrier diffusion length in the upper layer, (iii) an easily obtained indication of taper in the thickness of the upper layer, and (iv) surprisingly effective excitation of the active layer. By combining direct and indirect excitation it is shown that a clearer understanding of the location and detrimental influences of defects in the GaAs laser structure may be obtained. For example, the width of the region of reduced luminescence associated with many defects is found to be very excitation dependent and is confirmed to arise from reduced active region luminescence. The photoluminescent excitation techniques described should be useful in the study of other heterostructure devices and material systems.