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Quantum cascade lasers are of high interest in the scientific community due to unique applications utilizing the emission in mid-IR range. The possible designs of QCL are quite limited and require careful engineering to overcome some crucial disadvantages. One of them is an active region (ARn) overheat, that significantly affects the laser characteristics in the pulsed operation mode. In this work we consider the effects related to the non-equilibrium temperature distribution, when thermal resistance formalism is irrelevant. We employ the heat equation and discuss the possible limitations and structural features stemming from the chemical composition of the AR. We show that the presence of alloys in the ARn structure fundamentally limits the heat dissipation in pulsed and CW regimes due to their low thermal conductivity. Also the QCL post-growths affects the thermal properties of a device only in (near)CW mode while it is absolutely invaluable in the pulsed mode

The rapid development of optical technologies and applications revealed the critical role of point defects affecting device performance. One of the powerful tools to study influence of defects on charge capture and recombination processes is thermoluminescence. The popular models behind thermoluminescence and carrier capture processes are semi-classic though. They offer good qualitative description, but implicitly exclude quantum nature of the accompanying parameters, such as frequency factors and capture cross sections. As a consequence, results obtained for a specific host material cannot be successfully extrapolated to other materials. Thus, the main purpose of our work is to introduce a reliable analytical model that describes non-radiative capture and release of electrons from/to the conduction band (CB). The proposed model is governed by Bose-Einstein statistics (for phonon occupation) and Fermi's golden rule (for resonant charge transfer between the trap and the CB). The constructed model offers a physical interpretation of the capture coefficients and frequency factors, and seamlessly includes the Coulomb neutral/attractive nature of traps. It connects the frequency factor to the overlap of wavefunctions of the delocalized CB and trap states, and suggests a strong dependence on the density of charge distribution, i.e. the ionicity/covalency of the chemical bonds within the host. Separation of the resonance condition from the accumulation/dissipation of phonons on the site leads to the conclusion that the capture cross-section does not necessarily depend on the trap depth. The model is verified by comparison to reported experimental data, showing good agreement. As such, the model generates reliable information about trap states whose exact nature is not completely understood and allows to do materials research in a more systematic way.

The correct accounting for thermal effects is always a challenge when one needs to make quantitative predictions for any laser applications. In such complicated devices as quantum cascade lasers temperature strongly affects the operational conditions preventing reaching the CW mode as well as efficient lasing in pulsed regime. Rate equations are the most effective and simple way to model laser dynamics. However, the conventional approaches operate under the mean-field approximation, considering finite number of population levels, generalizing the obtained results to the infinite number of cascades, and do not take heating into account. In this work we modify the conventional three-level rate equation approach by adding self-heating description and applying it to the calculation of QCL dynamics. As a result we show how temperature affects the threshold characteristics and build-up time and include electronic aspects to the description of QCL.