ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the reduction of optical cavity volume by as much as two orders of magnitude, making a transition from microlasers to nanolasers. It describes the change in active medium from quantum wells to quantum dots, bringing about, e.g., devices operating with very few of emitters. The chapter begins with an excursion to show profit and limitations of laser rate equations for understanding the behavior of nanolasers, and at the same time establishes a connection to more sophisticated semiconductor laser models. It explains a microscopic laser model for solid-state emitters that goes beyond the rate equations and that provides access to the quantum-statistical properties of the emission. The chapter provides an overview of the underlying mechanisms of carrier-carrier and carrier-phonon interaction and explains methods to incorporate the dynamics into semiconductor laser models within different levels of approximation.