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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series A Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Bistability experimentally observed at three milliwatts in indium arsenide and theoretically predicted for a new class of nonlinear dielectrics

E. Garmire, CRAIG D. POOLE, J. A. Goldstone

Published Dec 18, 1984• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The results of an experimental investigation ol nonlinearities and bistability at the band gap in InAs are presented. Bistability was observed in reflection at 3 mW with a HF laser by using the large nonlinearity at the band-gap resonance in InAs. The measured nonlinear refractive index is shown quantitatively to agree with the dynamic Burstein—Moss shift as the mechanism, as long as both the full Fermi-Dirac statistics and the effect of light holes are included in the calculation. In a separate study a theoretical analysis has investigated general conditions for intrinsic bistability without cavities. It is shown that bistability can result from a nonlinear constitutive relation. Specific calculations are presented for bistability due to nonlinear polarization.

DOI
10.1098/rsta.1984.0104

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Nonlinear optical properties of laser-excited semiconductors are discussed, and the applications to optical bistability and optical logic are reviewed. The physical origin of the nonlinearities is analyzed in terms of the many-body interactions in the system of electron-hole pairs, causing effects such as plasma screening of the Coulomb interaction, band-gap renormalization, and band filling. Theoretical results for absorption and refractive-index spectra are compared to experimental data obtained for room-temperature GaAs and other semiconductors. The experimental and theoretical results for dispersive optical bistability in semiconductors are summarized, and recent experiments on optical logic gating and pattern recognition are discussed.

Journal of Applied Physics•Jan 15, 1988•66 citations
Abstract The results of an experimental investigation ol nonlinearities and bistability at the band gap in InAs are presented. Bistability was observed in reflection at 3 mW with a HF laser by using the large nonlinearity at the band-gap resonance in InAs. The measured nonlinear refractive index is shown quantitatively to agree with the dynamic Burstein—Moss shift as the mechanism, as long as both the full Fermi-Dirac statistics and the effect of light holes are included in the calculation. In a separate study a theoretical analysis has investigated general conditions for intrinsic bistability without cavities. It is shown that bistability can result from a nonlinear constitutive relation. Specific calculations are presented for bistability due to nonlinear polarization.
A detailed study of bandgap resonant optical nonlinearities in n-type InAs and their use in an optical bistable device is presented. The results of measurements of both nonlinear absorption and nonlinear refraction taken with an HF laser show good agreement with a band-filling model in which the contribution from the light-hole band and the effects of large initial free carrier densities are included. Evidence of the saturation of the nonlinear refraction through the carrier-density-dependent recombination rate is presented, and it is shown that this effect together with diffraction effects accounts for the critical power for bistability observed in the reflected signal from an InAs etalon at 77 K.
InSb has been shown to exhibit bistability and a very large nonlinear index.1 A semiconductor which is similiar, but which has a bandgap at shorter wavelengths is InAs. In this talk we present measurements of saturable absorption in InAs using an HF laser, which matches the bandgap of InAs at temperatures from 5° to 100° K. Using these measurements we have calculated a nonlinear refractive index of n2 = 2x10−5 cm2/W for light near but below the bandgap. These numbers are comparable to those measured in InSb and indicate that InAs may be a good material for bistable devices.
Abstract Detailed comparisons are made of the results of two approaches to the problem of nonlinear refraction at frequencies just below the band edge in semiconductors. The physical origin o f the nonlinear dispersion is taken to be direct saturation of independent, T2-broadened band states in the first model discussed. In the second model the refraction associated with a dynamic Burstein-Moss shift of the absorption edge is considered. Both models predict an extremely large nonlinearity, X(3) ≈ 1 e. s. u., of importance in the field of dispersive optical bistability and consistent with experimental observations of bistability, two-beam differential gain and four-wave mixing.
Nonlinear optical properties of laser-excited semiconductors are discussed, and the applications to optical bistability and optical logic are reviewed. The physical origin of the nonlinearities is analyzed in terms of the many-body interactions in the system of electron-hole pairs, causing effects such as plasma screening of the Coulomb interaction, band-gap renormalization, and band filling. Theoretical results for absorption and refractive-index spectra are compared to experimental data obtained for room-temperature GaAs and other semiconductors. The experimental and theoretical results for dispersive optical bistability in semiconductors are summarized, and recent experiments on optical logic gating and pattern recognition are discussed.