The band structures of rectangular GaN/AlGaN quantum wires are modeled by using a parabolic effective-mass theory.The absorption coefficients are calculated in a contact-density matrix approach based on the band structure.The results obtained indicate that the peak absorption coefficients augment with the increase of the injected carrier density,and the optical gain caused by interband transition is polarization anisotropic.For the photon energy near 1.55 eV,we can obtain relatively large peak gain.The calculations support the previous results published in the recent literature. The band structures of rectangular GaN / AlGaN quantum wires are modeled by using a parabolic effective-mass theory. The absorption coefficients are calculated in a contact-density matrix approach based on the band structure. The results obtain indicative that the peak absorption coefficients augment with the increase of the injected carrier density, and the optical gain caused by interband transition is polarization anisotropic. For the photon energy near 1.55 eV, we can achieve relatively large peak gain. calculations support the previous results published in the recent literature.