Due to the tight confinement of charge carriers in quantum dots, they exhibit an electronic structure similar to atoms.
Improvements in modulation bandwidth, lasing threshold, relative intensity noise, linewidth enhancement factor and temperature insensitivity have all been observed.
[1] One challenge in the further advances with quantum dot lasers is the presence of multicarrier Auger processes which increases the nonradiative rate upon population inversion.
[2] Auger processes are intrinsic to the material but, in contrast to bulk semiconductors, they can be engineered to some degree in quantum dots at the cost of reducing the radiative rate.
Devices based on quantum dot active media have found commercial application in medicine (laser scalpel, optical coherence tomography), display technologies (projection, laser TV), spectroscopy and telecommunications.