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

Absorption optical bistable scheme with additional lateral feedback

Vyacheslav A. Trofimov, Andrey Shobukhov, A. S. Makarik

Published Sep 24, 1999• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We consider an optically bistable scheme based on growing absorption and equipped with an additional lateral feedback loop. Mathematical model of this device is proposed and analyzed. We demonstrate the simultaneous transfer to instability of steady states that belong to upper and lower branches of the bistable media characteristic curve. This stability loss may cause either self-switching of the scheme from one steady state to another or generation of autooscillations. The latter may be used for the formation of pulse sequences with given duration. We show that adding several loops instead of one sufficiently decreases the input intensity, necessary for switching. The role of diffusion processes in pulse formation is discussed, and the spatially non-uniformal stationary solutions are demonstrated.

DOI
10.1117/12.364536

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Physical reasons for the development of spatial and temporal instabilities realizing in optical bistability (OB) cavity- free systems are analyzed. It is shown that there are certain types of instability. We describe diffraction instability of light beams due to its propagation through a boundary on a high absorption domain. We consider instability generated by nonlinear dependence of a relaxation time of excited states of atoms (molecules) on vibration temperature or on room temperature under the condition of presence (or absence) of nonlinear absorption. We investigate instability due to an influence of laser- induced electric field and instability caused by the delay in a scheme with additional lateral feedback and instability in a scheme with mirror having a hole at its axis caused by dynamical lenses.
The possibility of formation of a basic (stationary) and an additional (moving) high-absorption domain in an optically bistable system, based on high absorption, is demonstrated. A semiconductor with the absorption coefficient dependent on the concentration of free charge carriers in the conduction band is considered as a nonlinear medium. Under certain conditions, an optical beam passing through the stationary high-absorption domain acquires an annular profile and, after traveling a certain distance, transforms into a Gaussian beam with an intensity on the axis sufficient to switch the medium-beam system to the upper state. This moving domain periodically disappears and reappears due to diffusion processes.
We review and extend the theory of instabilities in absorptive optical bistability for ring cavities containing homogeneously broadened two-level media. The instabilities occur in the high-transmission branch and result in either a precipitation to the low-transmission branch or in pulsed multimode operation. Two numerical approaches are used to predict operation away from the simple mean-field limit. First, an iterative method is used to solve the general field eigenvalue equation for cavity modes with frequencies displaced from the input frequency. This work shows that the instability region decreases in size as the mirror transmission increases. These calculations are confirmed by the second numerical technique, consisting of direct integrations of the coupled Maxwell-Bloch equations. This second approach also provides time histories of the instability evolutions, and divides the instability range into a precipitation regime and a self-pulsing regime. The results are discussed in terms of first- and second-order phase transitions, and agree with the analytical results obtained within the dressed-mode description of optical bistability. They show that when the incident field is adiabatically decreased along the high-transmission branch, the spiking behavior always appears abruptly. By further decreasing the incident intensity, the self-pulsing disappears either continuously if the system remains in the high-transmission branch, or discontinuously if the system precipitates to the low-transmission branch. Connection is made with induced probe gain known in the saturation spectroscopy of absorbers (uninverted media), in which population pulsations transfer energy from a saturating wave to the probe waves. The very close relationship with multimode operation in homogeneously broadened unidirectional ring lasers is also established.
We report on the switching dynamics of a bistable device in the case when a holding power maintains the system in a stable state of the lower branch and a pulse address of finite duration (T) brings it close to the unstable state of the middle branch. For a critical pulse duration (Tc) the pulse exactly brings the device in the unstable state where it would indefinitely remain in the absence of fluctuations. For pulse duration close to Tc the device switches up to the upper branch (T>Tc) or relaxes to the initial state (T<Tc) after a lethargy time which follows a logarithmic law {1,2}.