Microscopic modeling of gain and luminescence in semiconductors

The capabilities of a fully microscopic approach for the calculation of optical material properties of semiconductor lasers are reviewed. Several comparisons between the results of these calculations and measured data are used to demonstrate that the approach yields excellent quantitative agreement with the experiment. It is outlined how this approach allows one to predict the optical properties of devices under high-power operating conditions based only on low-intensity photo luminescence (PL) spectra. Examples for the gain-, absorption-, PL- and linewidth enhancement factor-spectra in single and multiple quantum-well structures, superlattices, Type II quantum wells and quantum dots, and for various material systems are discussed.