The efficiency of carrier collection into the active region in GaAs-Al x Ga 1−x As quantum well structures is of considerable interest for the development of heterostructure lasers which should operate at room temperature. In order to gain access to a quantitative understanding of the capture and of the emission processes in these structures, we report an experimental study of the photoluminescence (PL) properties, after both picosecond and continuous-wave laser excitation, of a GaAs-Al 0.46 Ga 0.54 As superlattice (SL) heterostructure grown by molecular beam epitaxy. We show that the temperature dependence of the integrated PL intensity observed under both direct and indirect excitation in this SL containing a thicker quantum well in the structure centre, reveals much information about the mechanism of carrier emission processes.