A large improvement in the high speed characteristic of strained layer multiquantum well (MQW) DFB lasers with a selfaligned constricted mesa structure is described. A very low chirp of 4.2 angstrom at 10 Gbit/s was obtained due to an increased differential gain as large as 4.6 x 10(-12) m3/s and a reduced alpha parameter less than 2.