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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Transfer matrix formalism for the stationary response of nonlinear, multilayered structures for optical bistability

Jan Danckaert, Kristel Fobelets, Gert Cauwenberghs, Irina P. Veretennicoff

Published Aug 1, 1990• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The transfer matrix formalism, well known to describe the linear optical response of multilayered structures, is extended to the plane wave response of multilayered structures with an arbitrary number of Ken-type nonlinear layers, and including linear absorption too. It is shown that the dummy variable technique, well known in the description of the nonlinear Fabry-Perot, can be extended for multilayered structures. Several effects are highlighted for both superlattices and nonlinear interference filters.

DOI
10.1117/12.20655

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The transfer matrix formalism, well known to describe the linear optical response of multilayered structures, is extended to the plane wave response of multilayered structures with an arbitrary number of Ken-type nonlinear layers, and including linear absorption too. It is shown that the dummy variable technique, well known in the description of the nonlinear Fabry-Perot, can be extended for multilayered structures. Several effects are highlighted for both superlattices and nonlinear interference filters.
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We numerically demonstrate optical bistability in a nonlinear multilayer structure by utilizing the unique dispersion of hyperbolic metamaterials. The linear transmission is varied sharply with topological transition of isofrequency contour of the multilayer structure, and this non-resonant scheme enables realization of optical bistability with a short response time and a relatively low switching intensity. We have investigated exhaustively all possible topological transitions in the dispersion characteristics of the multilayer structure for optical bistability, and shown that the hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) type transition from Type II to Type I, and the transition from Type II HMM to effective dielectric are suitable for realizing high-performances optical bistability. The proposed schemes can overcome the trade-off between a switching intensity and a response time in resonance based optical bistabilities.