Circuit model for traveling wave semiconductor laser

ampliers
Weiyou Chen
*
, Aijun Wang, Yejin Zhang, Caixia Liu, Shiyong Liu
Department of Electronic Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130023, People's Republic of China
Received 2 December 1999
Abstract
A circuit model of a traveling wave semiconductor laser amplier is presented for the circuit level simulation of
single device or Optoelectronics Integrated Circuit (OEIC) included ampliers. To verify the model, the simulated
results are compared with the experimental results. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Traveling wave amplier; Circuit model; Computer-aided analysis
1. Introduction
A semiconductor laser is capable of amplifying lin-
early coherent light, below the threshold. Linear semi-
conductor laser ampliers (SLA) are of two types: one is
the traveling wave (TW) amplier [1,2], and the other is
the FabryPerot (FP) amplier. The principle of
TW-SLA and FP-SLA is identical, i.e. intrinsic stimu-
lated light amplication. The dierence is reectivity of
facets. FP-SLA is of a higher reectivity; light propa-
gates reciprocally in cavities, resulting in resonance
amplication. TW-SLA is of a lower reectivity; the
incident light is amplied in a single pass. TW-SLA is of
greater interest than FP-SLA. This article mainly studies
the circuit model of TW-SLA.
2. Model description
Traveling wave-semiconductor laser amplier oper-
ates in a multi-longitudinal mode, so it is necessary to
construct a circuit model by means of multi-longitudinal
mode rate equations. However, it is very complex to do
so, because the mode number is an uncertainty and a
large value. In our previous works [3], we adopted the
assumption [3] that the emission spectra of the amplier,
as a function of wave-length is of Gausss shape. This
assumption is also used in this article. For the conve-
nience of derivation, we suppose that the output of the
amplier is the linear superimposition of amplied
spontaneous emission and signal so that the spontane-
ous emission and signal can be processed separately.
2.1. Signal propagation behavior in a cavity
Fig. 1(a) schematically shows the propagation be-
havior of signal in a cavity. Here, we assume that the
incident light is illuminated on the left facet. The signal
photon density distributions are shown schematically in
Fig. 1(b), s
f
stands for the propagation in +z, and s
b
stands for the propagation in )z. Under the assumption
of uniform gain along the cavity, s
f
and s
b
can be written
as
s
f
= s
f0
exp(g
m
z)Y (1)
s
b
= s
bL
exp[g
m
(L z)[Y (2)
where, g
m
is the average net gain,
g
m
= Cg(nY k
i
) a
int
Y (3)
C is the optical connement factor, a
int
is the cavity
absorption coecient, k
i
is the signal light wavelength, g
is the gain function. Because TW-SLA operates under
Solid-State Electronics 44 (2000) 10091012
*
Corresponding author.
0038-1101/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 3 8 - 1 1 0 1 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 1 5 - 0
a threshold, gain saturation eect can be neglected, g as a
function of carrier density and wavelength can be rep-
resented as
g(nY k) = g
0
(n n
tr
)1 2(k k
p
)
2
aDk
2
g
Y (4)
where, g
0
is the gain constant, n is the carrier density in
an active region, n
tr
is the transparency carrier density,
Dk
g
is the FWHM of this function, k
p
is the center
wavelength.
At the left and right facets, the boundary conditions
are
s
f0
= s
in
R
L
s
b0
Y (5a)
s
bL
= R
R
s
fL
Y (5b)
where, s
f0
and s
b0
are the forward and backward prop-
agation photon densities at the left facet, respectively,
whereas s
fL
and s
bL
are the photon density at the right
facet. R
L
and R
R
are the reectivity of left and right
facets. s
in
is the incident photon density at left the facet,
as a function of incident light power can be expressed as
s
in
=
g
i
P
in
hmWDc
/
Y (6)
where, P
in
is the incident light power, g
i
is the incident
eciency, hm is the signal photon energy, W and D are
the width and thickness of the cavity. c
/
is the light speed
in the medium.
From Eqs. (1) and (2), we can get
s
fL
= s
f0
exp(g
m
L)Y (7a)
s
b0
= s
bL
exp(g
m
L)Y (7b)
where L is the cavity length.
Solving the equation set of Eqs. (5) and (7),
s
f0
=
s
in
1 R
L
R
R
exp(2g
m
L)
X (8)
The average signal photon density is
s
s
=
1
L

L
0
(s
f
s
b
)dz
=
s
in
[1 R
R
exp(g
m
L)[[ exp(g
m
L) 1[
g
m
L[1 R
R
R
L
exp(2g
m
L)[
X
(9)
The signal output powers from the left and right facets
are
P
outL
= hmWDc
/
(1 R
L
)R
R
s
f0
exp(2g
m
L)Y (10a)
P
outR
= hmWDc
/
(1 R
R
)s
f0
exp(g
m
L)X (10b)
2.2. Model derivation
According to Eqs. (10a) and (10b), if g
m
is known, it
is easy to get the signal output. However, it is very dif-
cult to get g
m
, because g
m
is determined with the carrier
density, and the carrier density is relative to spontaneous
emission recombination, nonradiative recombination,
and stimulated emission recombination. Therefore, we
must solve the carrier and photon rate equations. Due to
continuous spectrum operation of TW-SLA, we adopt
multi-longitudinal mode rate equations,
dn
dt
=
I
j
Q
R
n
(n) R
r
(n)

0
Cc
/
g(nY k)s(k) dk
Cc
/
g(nY k
i
)s
s
Y (11)
ds(k)
dt
= Cc
/
g(nY k)s(k)
s(k)
s
ph
b
sp
(k)R
r
(n)Y (12)
where I
j
is the injection current, Q=qV
act
, q is the
electron charge, V
act
=WDL. R
n
(n) and R
r
(n) are the
nonradiative and radiative recombination rates, respec-
tively [3].
According to the assumption of the Gaussian func-
tion of spontaneous emission spectra, the spontaneous
emission photon density as a function of wavelength can
be expressed as [3]
s(k) = s
p
exp4 ln2(k k
p
)
2
a(Dk
p
)
2
Y (13)
where s(k) is the total photon density inside and outside
the active region per unit wavelength, dening as the
total photon number inside and outside the active region
divided by active region volume. This is equivalent to
compressing the photon outside the active region into
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic propagation of the signal, and (b) sche-
matic of the photon density distribution.
1010 W. Chen et al. / Solid-State Electronics 44 (2000) 10091012
the active region, but those photons are not capable of
stimulating. s
p
is the peak value, Dk
p
is the FWHM.
The processing method of Eqs. (11) and (12) is sim-
ilar to that in Ref. [3].
The output powers of the spontaneous emission from
the left facet and the right facet per unit wavelength are
p
L
(k) =
hc
2
WD(R
L
1) ln(R
L
R
R
)
2n
g
k[1 R
L

R
L
aR
R
p
(1 R
R
)[
s(k)Y (14a)
p
R
(k) =
hc
2
WD(R
R
1) ln(R
R
R
L
)
2n
g
k[1 R
R

R
R
aR
L
p
(1 R
L
)[
s(k)X (14b)
From integral

0
p(k)dk, the total output power can be
obtained. In general, if Dk
p
k
p
, then the k in de-
nominator of Eq. (14) can be replaced by k
p
. The total
output powers are
P
L
=
hc
2
WD(R
L
1) ln(R
L
R
R
)
2n
g
k
p
[1 R
L

R
L
aR
R
p
(1 R
R
)[
s
tot
Y (15a)
P
R
=
hc
2
WD(R
R
1) ln(R
R
R
L
)
2n
g
k
p
[1 R
R

R
R
aR
L
p
(1 R
L
)[
s
tot
X (15b)
Based on Eqs. (10)(12) and (15), we construct the
TW-SLA circuit model as shown in Fig. 2, where
I
sti
= QCc
/
g(nY k
i
)s
s
. The other meaning of the elements
in this circuit model is similar as in Ref. [3].
There are seven ends in this model, the two ends re-
lated to V
e
correspond to real electrical ends, the upper
one is for anode, the lower one is for cathode. The other
ve ends are virtual. The end marked with P
in
is for the
power input; the input light source must be regarded as
the voltage source. The four ends placed at the lower
right are for signal output and spontaneous emission
output from the left and the right facets.
3. Simulation
The above model is converted to the subcircuit of
PSPICE; the simulation has been done by using
PSPICE, with the circuit shown in Fig. 3. Most of the
model parameters are mainly taken from Refs. [1,2,4], as
shown in Table 1. The parameters not shown in Table 1
are set to be zero.
To verify the model, the simulated results have been
compared with the experimental results given in Ref. [1],
as shown in Fig. 4. The solid curves are the simulated
results, the scatters are the experiment results. It can be
seen that for a smaller biased current, simulated results
agree well with the experimental results. For high cur-
rent, the output power of the right facet is far away from
the experimental result. This has resulted the gain sat-
uration eect is not being included in this model.
As examples, the other characteristics of the
TW-SLA have been simulated (Figs. 5 and 6). Fig. 5
shows the output power versus the incident power; it can
be seen that when the incident power increases, the
spontaneous emission output power decreases, the signal
Table 1
Model parameters
Parameters
(unit)
Value Parameter
(unit)
Value
A
n1
(s
1
) 2 10
8
R
s
(X) 1
A
n3
(cm
6
s
1
) 5 10
29
V
bi
(V) 1.13
A
r2
(cm
3
s
1
) 1.4 10
10
W (lm) 600
C
p
(pF) 10 Dk
g
(nm) 150
C
sc0
(pF) 10 Dk
s
(nm) 150
D (nm) 10 C 0.05
n
g
4.0 a
int
(cm
1
) 3
G
0
(cm
3
s
1
) 1.9 10
6
b
sp0
(lm
1
)
6 10
4
L (lm) 1500 g 2
n
tr
(cm
3
) 1.2 10
18
g
i
0.7
n
r
3.4 k
i
(lm) 0.9
R
d
(X) 1 10
10
k
p
(lm) 0.86
R
L
(R
R
) 0.0026
Fig. 2. The circuit model of TW-SLA.
Fig. 3. The circuit for simulation of TW-SLA.
W. Chen et al. / Solid-State Electronics 44 (2000) 10091012 1011
output power from right facet increases, the signal out-
put from left facet increases initially and then decreases.
The amplication ratio (dened as the right facet signal
output power/incident power) decreases with an increase
in the incident power. This is because for a xed biased
current, the increase in the incident power will result in
the increase of the photon density, the decrease of the
carrier density, and of the medium gain.
Fig. 6 gives the output power versus reectivity. As
shown in this gure, the output powers from the left and
the right facets are close to each other, with increasing
reectivity.
4. Conclusion
A circuit model of TW-SLA has been presented for
the circuit level simulation of OEIC with this type of
device. This model can be used to simulate the DC, AC
and transient characteristics of single TW-SLA or
OEIC.
References
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limited broad area semiconductor amplier. Electron Lett
1992;28(12):10824.
[2] Goldberg L, Mehuys D. 21W broad area near-diraction-
limited semiconductor amplier. Appl Phys Lett 1992;
61(6):6335.
[3] Chen W, Liu S. Circuit model for multilongitudinal-mode
semiconductor lasers. IEEE J Quant Electron 1996;32(12):
212832.
[4] Dai Z, Michalzik R, Unger P, Ebeling KJ. Numerical
simulation of broad-area high-power semiconductor laser
ampliers. IEEE J Quant Electron 1997;33(12):224053.
Fig. 4. Signal output power versus biased current. The incident
power is 500 mW ((d) right facet output, () left facet output).
Fig. 5. The output power versus the incident power, under
dierent biased currents. The dashed curves are for spontane-
ous emission, the dotted curves are for signal output from the
left facet, the solid curves are for the signal output from the
right facet.
Fig. 6. The output power versus the reectivity: The solid
curves are for signal output from the right facet and the dashed
curves are for signal output from the left facet.
1012 W. Chen et al. / Solid-State Electronics 44 (2000) 10091012