Free-carrier absorption in quantum cascade structures

Summary, in English

We show that the free-carrier absorption in quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) is very small and radically different from the classical Drude result due to the orthogonality between the direction of the carrier free motion and the electric field of the laser emission. A quantum mechanical calculation of the free-carrier absorption and intersubband oblique absorption induced by interface defects, Coulombic impurities, and optical phonon absorption/emission is presented for QCLs with a double-quantum-well design. The interaction between the electrons and the optical phonons dominates at room temperature.