Below-band-gap absorption in undoped GaAs at elevated temperatures

Abstract This paper presents results of measurements of optical absorption in undoped epitaxial GaAs for photon energies below the band gap. Absorption spectra were determined from transmission spectra of a thin GaAs layer at several temperatures between 25 °C and 205 °C. We optimized our experiment to investigate the long-wavelength part of the spectrum, where the absorption is relatively low, but significant from the point of view of applications of GaAs in semiconductor lasers. Absorption of 100 cm −1 was observed over 30 nm below the band gap at high temperatures.