Nonequilibrium carrier dynamics has been investigated in ELO and HYPE grown GaN layers in a wide temperature and excitation range by using the time-resolved picosecond FWM technique. Carrier lifetime in the samples at 300 K increased up to 2.8-5.1 ns in accordance with the decreasing threading dislocation density from 4 x 10(7) cm(-2) (ELO) to mid 106 cm(-2) in HYPE layers. At T < 100 K, the hyperbolic shape of FWM kinetics indicated carrier density dependent radiative lifetimes, which gradually decreased at lower temperatures to a few hundreds of ps. The dominance of bimolecular recombination in HVPE layers at 10-40 K was demonstrated by the exposure characteristic of FWM, that has shown a sublinear growth of carrier density with excitation, N proportional to I-1/2. Numerical fitting of the set of FWM kinetics at various T confirmed the temperature dependence of bimolecular recombination coefficient B proportional to T-1/5 and provided its value B = 2 x 10(-11) cm(3)/s at 300 K and 3.2 x 10(-9) cm(3)/s at 9 K. The measured bipolar diffusion coefficients allowed determination of carrier diffusion length of 0.8-1 mu m at 300 K and its dependence on dislocation density and temperature. (c) WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.