Extraction of the electron excess temperature in terahertz quantum cascade lasers from laser characteristics

Nathalie Lander Gower; Shiran Levy; Silvia Piperno; Sadhvikas J Addamane; John L Reno; Asaf Albo

doi:10.1515/nanoph-2023-0617

Extraction of the electron excess temperature in terahertz quantum cascade lasers from laser characteristics

Nanophotonics. 2024 Jan 10;13(10):1725-1733. doi: 10.1515/nanoph-2023-0617. eCollection 2024 Apr.

Authors

Nathalie Lander Gower^{1

2}, Shiran Levy^{1

2}, Silvia Piperno^{1

2}, Sadhvikas J Addamane³, John L Reno³, Asaf Albo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Engineering, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.
² The Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.
³ Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories, MS 1303, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1303, USA.

Abstract

We propose a method to extract the upper laser level's (ULL's) excess electronic temperature from the analysis of the maximum light output power (P _max) and current dynamic range ΔJ _d = (J _max - J _th) of terahertz quantum cascade lasers (THz QCLs). We validated this method, both through simulation and experiment, by applying it on THz QCLs supporting a clean three-level system. Detailed knowledge of electronic excess temperatures is of utmost importance in order to achieve high temperature performance of THz QCLs. Our method is simple and can be easily implemented, meaning an extraction of the excess electron temperature can be achieved without intensive experimental effort. This knowledge should pave the way toward improvement of the temperature performance of THz QCLs beyond the state-of-the-art.

Keywords: LO-phonon; electron temperature; terahertz quantum cascade lasers.