Active-region designs in quantum cascade lasers

This paper analyses the development of active-region designs in quantum cascade lasers. Active-region designs have been demonstrated to date that employ various radiative transitions (vertical, diagonal, interminiband and interband). The lower laser level is depopulated through nonradiative transitions, such as one- or two-phonon (and even three-phonon) relaxation or bound state → continuum transitions. Advances in active-region designs and energy diagram optimisation in the past few years have led to significant improvements in important characteristics of quantum cascade lasers, such as their output power, emission bandwidth, characteristic temperature and efficiency.