Numerical study of subband electron temperature effect on a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser output characteristics

We present a self-consistent numerical approach to simulate the output characteristics of a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser, taking into account the effects of both effective subband electron temperature (T_e) and optical emission. The current-light (I-L) and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics are simulated with and without the effect of T_e. The simulation agrees with the reported experimental results. A comparison between the two cases (with and without optical emission) reveals that optical emission helps bring down the subband effective electron temperature.