Modulation behavior of semiconductor injection lasers

GaAs double heterostructure semiconductor injection lasers which now exhibit more than 25000 h cw room temperature lifetime are of great interest for future use as directly modulated transmitters for high bit-rate fiber optical communications. The effects limiting this application are modulation distortions, spectral width and additional spectral broadening in the case of modulation and spontaneous fluctuations of the output power. The dynamic and spectral behavior of injection lasers, the methods of high bit-rate modulation and the improvement of the high bit-rate modulation capability by coupling two lasers are discussed.