Superluminescent diodes based on asymmetric double-quantum-well heterostructures

Abstract The power and spectral characteristics of near-IR superluminescent diodes (SLDs) based on asymmetric double-quantum-well GaAs/InGaAs heterostructures are studied experimentally. It is shown that, varying the active layer composition and the spatial-single-mode active channel length of these SLDs, it is possible to widely change the achievable output optical power and the spectral width of the symmetric bell-shaped spectrum. The studied SLDs have a lower coherence function pedestal, a weaker dependence of the spectral width on the injection current, and a higher polarisation degree than the widely spread SLDs based on single-quantum-well heterostructures with the same spectral widths.