Direct and indirect capture of carriers into the lasing ground state and the light-current characteristic of quantum dot lasers

We calculate the light-current characteristic (LCC) of a quantum dot (QD) laser under the conditions of both direct and indirect capture of carriers from the optical confinement layer into the lasing ground state in QDs. We show that direct capture is a dominant process determining the ground-state LCC. Only when direct capture is slow, the role of indirect capture (capture into the QD excited state and subsequent intradot relaxation to the ground state) becomes important. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.