The Response of Split-Well Direct-Phonon THz Quantum-Cascade Laser Structures to Changes in Doping

We have studied the effect of doping on the temperature performance of a split-well (SW) direct-phonon (DP) terahertz (THz) quantum-cascade laser (QCL) scheme supporting a clean three-level system. We expected to obtain a similar improvement in the temperature performance to that observed in resonant-phonon (RP) schemes after increasing the carrier concentration from $3 \times 10^{10} cm ^{-2} to 6 \times 10^{10}, cm^{-2}$ To our surprise, in the devices we checked, the results show the contrary. However, we observed a significant increase in gain broadening and a reduction in the dephasing time as the doping and temperature increased. We attribute these effects to enhanced ionized-impurity scattering (IIS). The observation and study of effects related to dephasing included in our experimental work have previously only been possible via simulation.