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

Nonlinear optical properties of composite materials

Joseph W. Haus, Ramarao Inguva

Published Sep 1, 1991• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The optical properties of a new class of composite nonlinear materials composed of coated grains, such as cadmium sulfide with a silver coating, are examined. These materials exhibit intrinsic optical bistability and resonantly enhanced conjugate reflectivity. The threshold for intrinsic optical bistability is low enough for practical applications in optical communications and optical computing. Some problems associated with the fabrication of these materials are addressed. Based on preliminary results, switching times are expected to be in the subpicosecond range.

DOI
10.1117/12.46792

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The optical properties of a new class of composite nonlinear materials composed of coated grains, such as cadmium sulfide with a silver coating, are examined. These materials exhibit intrinsic optical bistability and resonantly enhanced conjugate reflectivity. The threshold for intrinsic optical bistability is low enough for practical applications in optical communications and optical computing. Some problems associated with the fabrication of these materials are addressed. Based on preliminary results, switching times are expected to be in the subpicosecond range.
The propagation of electromagnetic waves in a nonlinear medium composed of semiconductor microcrystallites embedded in a host medium has been investigated. Explicit results are given for the case of cadmium sulfide grains in glass when a saturable two-level approximation is used for the nonlinear dielectric function. The bistable behavior, noticed earlier by Chemla and Miller [ Opt. Lett.11, 522 ( 1986)], for single grains is manifested in the propagation studies conducted here by the occurrence of a discontinuity in the index of refraction in the medium. Various approximations are used to obtain the optical bistability properties. Possible applications of this feature are pointed out.
We present results on the nonlinear-optical response for a series of dielectric particles having nanometer sizes that are coated with a metallic shell. Using the freedom of changing particle shapes and coating thicknesses, we optimize the threshold intensity for intrinsic optical bistability. The metallic shell creates an enhanced local field in the nonlinear core. We report threshold intensities for silver-coated CdS as low as 12 W/cm2{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}cm2.
It is well known that dense materials with local-field effects can show "intrinsic" optical bistability when they are directly irradiated by a light beam. This has been shown theoretically in a number of works and also experimentally in several cases, in gas media and also in doped solid-state materials where nonlinearities based on standard local-field effects can be reinforced with other ion interaction effects. Although from the point of view of applications nonlinearities stronger than those found so far would be desirable, the fact that no optical resonator is needed to achieve bistability makes these materials potentially interesting for applications in optical information storage and processing.
The intrinsic optical bistability (OB) of graded core-shell granular composites is investigated. The coated particles are made of cores with gradient dielectric function ∊ c (r) = A(r/a) k and nonlinear shells. In view of the exponential distribution of the core dielectric constant, the potential functions of each region are obtained by solving the Maxwell equations, and the mathematical expressions of electric field in the shells and cores are determined. Numerical study reveals that the optical bistable threshold and the threshold width of the composite medium are dependent on the shell thickness, core dielectric exponent, and power function coefficient. The optical bistable width increases with the decreasing shell thickness and the power exponent and with the increasing power function coefficient.
The electromagnetic properties of the interface between a left-handed material and a conventional nonlinear material were investigated theoretically and numerically. We found a new phenomenon—optical bistability of the interface. It was shown that the incident intensity, incident angle and permeability ratio between the left-handed and the nonlinear materials could dramatically affect the optical bistable behaviour. We also compared the bistable behaviours of different electromagnetic modes. The results indicated that the TE mode was prior to the TM mode to obtain optical bistability for the same parameter.