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Optics Letters

Optical bistability of an aerosol particle

S. R. Arnold, Antonino B. Pluchino, K. M. Leung

Published Dec 1, 1986• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The optical bistability of an aerosol particle is reported for the first time to the authors' knowledge. The mechanism for the effect is associated with the photothermal evaporation that accompanies the visible absorption by structure resonances.
DOI
10.1364/ol.11.000800

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We present a catastrophe-based graphic model for understanding the optical bistability (OB) of an aqueous aerosol particle detected in light scattering. The model is shown to be in good agreement with hidden resonance experiments and indicates that OB in such particles can occur at an incident power level of <50 x 10(-9) W. This threshold is controlled principally by the quality factor of morphological resonances and thermophysical properties of the particle. A catastrophe scheme for the bistability of solid particles is anticipated.
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Intrinsic optical bistability in the scattering and absorption of light from Rayleigh-particle-sized microparticles having an intensity-dependent refractive index is theoretically investigated. For particles near plasmon resonances optical switching also occurs by sweeping the frequency across the resonance at fixed incident intensity above a certain threshold. Several orders of magnitudes of reduction in the switching intensities are possible near sharp resonances, and an optical transistor mode with a very sizable differential gain can be achieved.
A novel mechanism is proposed for optical bistability by utilizing the effect of interference which occurs when two levels are coupled by a one-photon resonance and by a two-photon resonance. The resulting bistability does not require atomic saturation, so the bistability can be observed at relatively low incident intensities, and the mechanism is essentially Doppler free, since it occurs by a two-photon process involving absorption of counterpropagating beams of the same frequency. A significant feature is that two-photon bistability can be controlled not only by the magnitude of the field of the one-photon resonance but also by its phase, and an oscillation or amplification of the field of the two-photon resonance can be observed under certain conditions by the mechanism of the parametric interaction of the field of the one-photon resonance and the field of the two-photon resonance through a nonlinear medium.
Since the first observation of optical bistability in 1976 (1), a large number of investigations of this phenomenon have appeared in the literature (2). Of particular theoretical interest has been the bistable system composed of "two-level" atoms within an optical resonator. While the theory in this case is well-advanced, only recently have experimental results been obtained (3,4). The work that we report is for absorptive bistability with an intracavity medium that approximates a collection of two-level atoms.