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physica status solidi (b)

Possibilities for Intrinsic Optical Bistability in Semiconductor‐Doped Glasses

Th. Peschel

Published May 1, 1990• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Equations of motion for the excitation rate of electron‐hole pairs in semiconductor microcrystals are derived for excitation with picosecond pulses. The inhomogeneous and nonlocal character of the polarization is taken into account. The result are equations describing the macroscopic susceptibility of a semiconductor‐doped glass. On this basis different possibilities for resonatorless optical bistability due to local field effects are discussed and necessary conditions for its appearence are derived.

DOI
10.1002/pssb.2221590134

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Abstract Equations of motion for the excitation rate of electron‐hole pairs in semiconductor microcrystals are derived for excitation with picosecond pulses. The inhomogeneous and nonlocal character of the polarization is taken into account. The result are equations describing the macroscopic susceptibility of a semiconductor‐doped glass. On this basis different possibilities for resonatorless optical bistability due to local field effects are discussed and necessary conditions for its appearence are derived.
We present a simple experiment which demonstrates the main features of intrinsic optical bistability obtained through thermally induced shifts in the band edge of semiconductor particles embedded in a glass matrix. This readily demonstrates how nonlinear optical effects can be used to transmit information, providing an instructive introduction to the main concepts of optical computing. Several possible extensions of the experiment suitable for advanced independent research projects are discussed.
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Abstract Optical bistability (OB) is a phenomenon that describes a light induced phase transition in the non-equilibrium state. It is vital for all-optical computing and communication, serving as the basis for switches, logic gates, transistors, and memory. By enabling two stable light states, OB allows storage and fast switching, making high-speed, energy-efficient data processing possible. In this work we study the phenomenon in a two-band semiconductor in an optical cavity. Starting from a many-body Hamiltonian of optically generated electrons, holes and light-semiconductor interaction and Coulomb electron–electron, hole–hole and electron–hole interactions, we obtain the optical Bloch equations, in the mean field approximation, where relaxation is included phenomenologically. We obtain expressions for particle density, excitonic pair density and output intensity as non-linear functions of input light intensity. All these quantities show bistable behaviour, with two stable phases, and hysteresis in the non-equilibrium state. Equilibrium is ensured by introducing damping terms for the particle density amplitude, excitonic density amplitude, and cavity photon amplitude phenomenologically. The electron–hole pairs increase with light intensity, shows bistable features and then disappears with further increase in the input light intensity. The bistable behaviour becomes pronounced as we pass from low Coulomb interaction strengths to high Coulomb interaction strengths between electrons and holes. For sub-bandgap excitations, the output light versus incident light shows a complex behaviour.
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.
The optical spectra of laser-excited semiconductors change with varying laser intensity. Close to exciton or biexciton resonances these optical nonlinearities are, e.g., large enough to obtain optical bistability. The cause for these large nonlinearities are many-body effects in the system of the electron-hole pair excitation. The use of nonequilibrium Green’s functions, or if a quasi-equilibrium exists of thermal Green’s functions, makes it possible to take radiative and Coulomb interactions consistently into account.