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Optical and Quantum Electronics

Saturating refractive non-linearities and optical bistability: implications for excitonic switching

Philip Keith Milsom, Alan Miller

Published Mar 1, 1989• 9 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/bf02190071

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Aug 17, 1998•0 citations
We report time-resolved studies of transient gratings in room-temperature GaAs/AlGaAs multiple-quantum-well structures made using a subpicosecond laser system. Forward-traveling and counterpropagating four-wave mixing geometries produced carrier modulation either parallel or perpendicular to the quantum wells such that the highly anisotropic carrier diffusion could be monitored. Carrier heating and cross-well transport was monitored and geometrical control of the diffusion and resulting four-wave mixing time constant demonstrated. Measured diffraction efficiencies gave the refractive-index change of the order of Δn ~ 0.02 at the onset of saturation of the heavy-hole exciton nonlinearity. Implications for refractive optical bistability are discussed through a determination of the limiting conditions for switching.
A general discussion of the linear-optical properties of free and bound excitons in direct-gap semiconductors at low temperature is presented. This discussion then specializes to CdS. The nonlinear-optical response of CdS is introduced by first discussing the saturation behavior of bound excitons. A new type of cavityless optical bistability based on induced absorption near the free and bound excitons is described. Finally, fast all-optical switching (<1 nsec) at very low switching energies (<8 pJ) is demonstrated, using the giant nonlinearity associated with bound excitons.
The excitonic nonlinear refractive index was calculated by using Kramers-Kronig relation and the saturating absorption of ZnSe/CdZnSe multiple quantum wells (MQWs) was studied under different pump intensities. The maximum nonlinear refractive index change is about -6.19 X 10-3. Excitonic optical bistability in ZnSe/CdZnSe MQWs is investigated at room temperature. The result indicates that the threshold and contrast ratio for the optical bistability in ZnSe/CdZnSe MQWs are about 210Kw/cm2 and 2:1, respectively. On the basis of the excitonic nonlinear theories and excitonic absorption spectra in the ZnSe/CdZnSe MQWs, we attribute the major nonlinear mechanism of the optical bistability in the ZnSe/CdZnSe MQWs to the phase space filling of excitonic states and excitonic band broadening due to exciton-exciton interactions.