Optical Bistability and Modulation in Semiconductor Etalons
H. M. Gibbs, S. L. McCall, Thirumalai Venkatesan +3 more
Optical signal processing using all-optical circuitry is an increasingly attractive goal with the recent progress in long- lived light sources, high quantum efficiency detectors, and low- loss high-bandwidth optical fibers. Devices which permit one light beam to control another or which provide an optical memory afford a capability essential to the success of all-optical logic systems. Much progress has been made toward practical bistable1 devices since the first observation2 of optical bistability in sodium vapor. (By optical bistability we refer to devices containing no inverted medium, so that bistable lasers3 are explicitly excluded.) The most practical device so far, a semiconductor etalon consisting of 4 μm of GaAs between 0.2 μm of Al0.42Ga0.53As with R = 0.9 coatings, is described herein.
Integrated and Guided-Wave Optics•Jan 1, 1980•1 citation