Many body effects on the linewidth enhancement factor of strained quantum wire lasers

A theoretical analysis of the many body effects on the linewidth enhancement factor of the InGaAs/InP strained quantum wire lasers is presented here. The theoretical approach is based on the semiconductor Bloch equations, where the dephasing process is treated at the level of the quantum kinetic theory. Electron-hole Coulomb correlation leads to the reduction of gain spectrum and refractive index change, contrary to the well known results for quantum well and bulk systems. The linewidth enhancement factor is overestimated and increases with the increasing carrier density in free-carrier model. But it is lowered and nearly constant with the increasing carrier density in the microscopic model. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.