Photorefractive saturable absorptive and dispersive optical bistability

Weston J. Sandle, Alan C. Gallagher

Shimon Weiss, B. Fischer

It is shown that photorefractive wave-mixing gives saturable gain, saturable absorption and Kerr-like nonlinear phase retardation. An analogy between photorefractive two-beam coupling and two-level atom system is then drawn. We investigate optical bistability in a ring cavity, utilizing these phenomena, and compare our results with classical absorptive and dispersive optical bistability.

Shimon Weiss, Baruch Fischer

Kishore K. Kamath, P. R. Vaya

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the study of absorption spectrum, particularly in the absorption tail region due to the possibility of using the semiconductor etalons for optical bistability. It has been shown that both the dispersive and absorptive optical bistability are possible in semiconductors. However, it is very difficult to obtain absorption saturation in the tail region.1 Therefore, it is very important to study the mechanism of formation, and the density of states distribution in the absorption tail region.

Lorenzo M. Narducci, James D. Farina, L. Benza

Ying Hua Ji, Fucheng Lin

The optical bistability of a four-level system with triplet-state absorption typical of organic media is studied. We derive the state equation of optical bistability with triplet-state absorption. Different bistabilities with resonant absorption or dispersion of the triplet state are numerically discussed. The effects of the cooperativity parameter and the atomic- and cavity-detuning parameters on optical bistable behavior are analyzed. It is found that the hysteresis loops decrease with an increase of both the cooperativity parameter and the atomic-detuning parameter of the triplet state and that under some conditions reverse saturable-absorptive media can display bistability.