Effect of Coulomb interaction with barrier carriers in the waveguide region on multiple quantum well laser inversion threshold

A mechanism of nonradiative recombination of nonequilibrium carriers in semiconductor quantum wells is suggested and discussed. For a studied Auger recombination process the energy of localized electron-hole pair is transferred to barrier carriers due to Coulomb interaction. It is shown that the Auger coefficient is a weak function of temperature and nonmonotonically depends on the quantum well width. (paper)