Modeling semiconductor lasers: simulation of devices based on microscopic physics

We are currently developing 2 semiconductor laser simulators built on a first-principles microscopic physics basis. The first is a PC-based, plane-wave simulator for both component and system-level design of low-power optoelectronic devices. The second is a supercomputer-based simulator that models the fully time-dependent and spatially-resolved optical, carrier, and temperature fields for arbitrary geometry, high-power semiconductor lasers. Both simulators are based on a comprehensive gain model that includes the relevant bandstructure of the quantum wells and confining barrier regions together with a fully quantum mechanical many-body calculation that takes all occupied bands into account.