Spatial and temporal characteristics of optical bistability in indium antimonide

Abdul-Hussain K. Iltaif

Hameed Abdul-Wahid Ahmid Al Attar

CRAIG D. POOLE

Jeffrey E. Ehrlich, Gaetano Assanto, G. I. Stegeman +1 more

Various grating configurations used to obtain optical bistability in a guided-wave format are discussed and experimentally demonstrated using indium antimonide planar waveguides. The theory of nonlinear diffusive distributed input grating coupling, is presented. The enhancement afforded by additional feedback mechanisms is verified, both with an externally coupled counterpropagating beam and with an integrated optics Bragg reflector.>

David A. B. Miller, Stanley Desmond Smith, C. T. Seaton

A V Grigor'yants, I.N. Dyuzhikhov

Transverse effects in optical bistability are experimentally investigated by spatial scanning of the near-field profile of the reflected beam in an InSb interferometer at 5.6 μm and 80 K. Spatial hysteresis is clearly observed for two interference orders, while the character of the hysteresis loops shows strong dependence on the radial coordinate and also on interference order. The results are consistent with an electronic nonlinearity and a dominantly diffusive transverse coupling.