Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-laser-science-and-quantum-information-processing-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/2/c/solution

Assume equal excess electron and electron hole number densities , with no additional doping imbalance. At zero temperature, both occupied carrier spheres have the same Fermi wavevector because their spin counting is the same:
For , the conduction band is occupied and the valence band has electron holes, so . Beyond the occupations reverse and the medium absorbs. Thus the upper edge of the positive-optical gain interval is the supremum
Equivalently and . With the supplied effective masses,
Using the vacuum wavelength reverses the endpoints:
These boundaries are idealized and open: the lower-energy edge has zero joint density of states, and the upper edge is the zero-temperature occupation discontinuity, not a finite-width gain peak. The calculation gives positive material optical gain, not the stronger requirement of exceeding the losses at laser threshold.

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