Low-power spontaneous oscillations driven by band-filling effect

We predict that self-sustained oscillations can be generated in a semiconductor nanocavity in which the dominant effect is band-filling dispersion. Linear stability analysis, validated through numerical integration of a mean-field model, leads us to envisage oscillations typically at tens of gigahertz, with onset at much lower input power (∼ 100 μW) compared with those driven by two-photon absorption.