Room-temperature carrier lifetimes and optical nonlinearities of gallium-indium-arsenide/aluminum-indium-arsenide and gallium-aluminum-indium-arsenide/aluminum-indium-arsenide MQW devices at 1.3μm

The room-temperature nonlinear absorption spectra of a GaInAs/AlInAs and a GaAlInAs/AlInAs multiple quantum well (MQW) were measured near 1.3 μm using a pump-probe technique. Saturation carrier densities at the heavy-hole exciton peak were determined to be 1.2 x 10¹⁸ and 1.0 x 10¹⁸ cm⁻³ with carrier lifetimes of ≃ 2.3 ns and ≃ 750 ps for the two samples, respectively. Fabry-Perot etalons with integrated mirrors grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) with GaInAs/AlInAs MQWs as spacer layers were also fabricated as optical switching devices. A 175 ps recovery time was measured for the etalon at room temperature.