Dynamic and noise properties of tunable multielectrodesemiconductor lasers including spatial hole burning and nonlinear gain

A general formalism based on the Green's function method is given for multielectrode semiconductor lasers. The effects of both spatial hole burning and nonlinear gain are included in this formalism. An effective nonlinear gain is introduced by taking into account the influence of the laser structure and the associated distribution of the mode intensity along the cavity length and the frequency and intensity modulation properties of multielectrode semiconductor lasers are studied. A general linewidth expression which includes contributions from spontaneous emission and carrier shot noise is given. It is found that the effective α-factor affecting the linewidth is in general different from its counterpart affecting modulation and injection locking properties due to spatial hole burning and nonlinear gain. The linewidth due to various contributions is calculated for both uniform intensity distributed lasers and phase-shifted distributed feedback (DFB) lasers