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Journal of Applied Physics

Transient response of nonlinear optical interactions in semiconductor superlattices

Yia‐Chung Chang

Published Mar 15, 1986• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Transient behaviors of the optical bistability and degenerate four-wave mixing in semiconductor superlattices due to two different mechanisms, the band nonparabolicity and photoexcited plasma, are studied theoretically. For the optical bistability, the switching time and switching power are estimated for a number of semiconductor superlattices.

DOI
10.1063/1.336355

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Transient behaviors of the optical bistability and degenerate four-wave mixing in semiconductor superlattices due to two different mechanisms, the band nonparabolicity and photoexcited plasma, are studied theoretically. For the optical bistability, the switching time and switching power are estimated for a number of semiconductor superlattices.
Semiconductors exhibit large optical nonlinearities near the band edge because of resonance enhancement. Optical bistability occurs when the optical nonlinearities are coupled with feedback. In bulk GaAs and GaAs–AlGaAs multiple-quantum-well superlattices, the nonlinearity arising from the presence of the free-exciton resonance has produced room-temperature optical bistability with a few milliwatts of power. The formation of biexcitons in CuCl, the saturation of the bound exciton on CdS, and band-filling effects in InSb, InAs, and HgCdTe lead to observation of bistability in these materials. A bistable etalon can be operated in an optical-gate mode to generate optical analogs of electronic gates such as and, or, and nor. It has been demonstrated that a GaAs optical NOR gate responds in ∼1 psec, using only ≲3 pJ of energy. However, because of the carrier lifetime of a few nanoseconds, the repetition rate of the NOR gate is now limited to a few hundred megahertz.
Detailed results are presented on optical bistability (OB) and two-beam optical transistor (transphasor) action in simple, one-element Fabry-Perot devices, with the semiconductor InSb using a CW CO laser near the bandgap region, and OB for semiconductors in general is discussed. OB and multistability are seen in transmission and reflection at 5 K. At 77 K,n_{2} \simeq 3 \times 10^{-3}cm2/W [corresponding to an effective\chi^{(3)} \sim 1ESU] is measured and OB is observed at ∼8 mW. Transphasor action at 5 K is presented and the influence of degenerate four-wave mixing is discussed. The basic physics of the microscopic mechanism for n2(bandgap-resonant saturation) is summarized and a simplified, generalized model is derived. This model and arguments on cavity optimization are used to predict order of magnitude limits to switching power, energy, and speed, both in InSb and other semiconductors, even in the absence of excitonic enhancement.
In the past decade, experimental results of transient optical bistabilities in etalons of CdSxSe1-x doped glasses have been presented by many authors[1-3]. Switching speed of ns to ps orders has been obtained. However, there still do not exist a dynamics theory of this transient optical bistability. This paper emphasizes the dependence of the implementation of transient optical bistabilities on the incident pulse width, the media response time, the FP cavity establishing time, and also, the influence of the incident pulse width on the switching speed.