Nanowire terahertz quantum cascade lasers

TL;DR

This paper proposes nanowire-based terahertz quantum cascade lasers and uses non-equilibrium Green functions to analyze how quantum confinement affects their transport and gain properties, showing improved performance over traditional designs.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model for nanowire terahertz quantum cascade lasers and demonstrates enhanced temperature operation and reduced threshold current due to quantum confinement.

Findings

Increased maximum operation temperature due to lateral quantum confinement.

Significant reduction in current density threshold compared to conventional lasers.

Transport and gain properties vary with nanowire thickness, from classical to quantum regimes.

Abstract

Quantum cascade lasers made of nanowire axial heterostructures are proposed. The dissipative quantum dynamics of their carriers is theoretically investigated using non-equilibrium Green functions. Their transport and gain properties are calculated for varying nanowire thickness, from the classical-wire regime to the quantum-wire regime. Our calculation shows that the lateral quantum confinement provided by the nanowires allows an increase of the maximum operation temperature and a strong reduction of the current density threshold compared to conventional terahertz quantum cascade lasers.