The carrier relaxation kinetics and nonlinear optical properties of strain‐induced laterally ordered (InP)2/(GaP)2quantum wire (QWR) samples were examined with time‐resolved cathodoluminescence. A temperature dependence of the QWR luminescence decay time reveals that thermal activation of carriers in the QWR and transfer to and from In0.49Ga0.51P barriers plays an important role in determining the measured lifetimes. The presence of disorder in the QWRs was found to induce inhomogeneous regions which exhibit large variations in carrier capture and band filling. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.