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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series A Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Switching of optically bistable devices by incoherent illuminations

Frank A. P. Tooley, Andrew Walker, Stanley Desmond Smith

Published Dec 18, 1984• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract We report the first observation of the external switching of an intrinsic optically bistable device by incoherent radiation. The device, consisting of an InSb etalon held at 85 K and optically biased by a continuous wave CO laser operating at 5.5 pm, was switched both from off to on resonance and from on to off resonance by using a photographic flashlamp. Results presented indicate that the required switching energy per unit area can be of the order of 100 fJ pm-2.

DOI
10.1098/rsta.1984.0118

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•May 15, 1981•1 citation
Abstract We report the first observation of the external switching of an intrinsic optically bistable device by incoherent radiation. The device, consisting of an InSb etalon held at 85 K and optically biased by a continuous wave CO laser operating at 5.5 pm, was switched both from off to on resonance and from on to off resonance by using a photographic flashlamp. Results presented indicate that the required switching energy per unit area can be of the order of 100 fJ pm-2.
We report the observation of external switching of an intrinsic optically bistable device by incoherent illumination. The InSb etalons used in this study were switched by a photographic flashlamp both from off to on resonance and, under different conditions, from on to off resonsance. It has been demonstrated experimentally that switching can be initiated as a result of either an electronic or a thermal effect. The parameters that determine which mechanism dominates in a particular instance are discussed. The results should have general application to a variety of materials of device interest.
Abstract InSb etalons operated at 77 K and illuminated by CO lasers (5.5 pm) exhibit continuous wave (c.w.) optical bistability. A wide range of experiments have been performed to further the basic characterization of these devices and to demonstrate their various potential applications. The latter include signal amplification, modulation and, with external switching, the construction of logic gates. Two devices on a single etalon have now been coupled to form a simple all-optical circuit. New results have also been obtained with InSb at room temperature with pulsed CO2 lasers (10.6 pm).
We report the first observation of quasi-steady-state optical bistability in an InSb etalon at room temperature as a result of the generation of free carriers through two photon absorption of 10 μm radiation. Nonlinear tuning of the etalon through two free spectral ranges has been achieved, with bistability observed around the two cavity resonances. Switching from a low to high transmission state has been achieved in times less than 10 ns while switching in the opposite direction occurs within 50-100 ns. The experimental results have been successfully fitted to a numerical model of the device.
We report the first known direct observation of the critical slowing-down effect and transient bimodality in an intrinsic semiconductor all-optically bistable device with a cw CO laser holding beam and a PbSSe diode laser switching beam. The measurements of critical slow-down effects show good agreement with the numerical model using a modified Debye dynamic equation. The switching profile has been shown to depend on both the size of the hysteresis loop and the diode pulse parameter. A scaling law for the delay time of the switching when external parameter P changes close to the critical value Pc has been indicated to fit (P − Pc)−1/2.
In this work, the external switching dynamics of a Fabry-Perot etalon are studied via optical bistability system simulation. The simulated set-up of this investigation consists of two laser beams; the first beam is continuous (CW) which is considered as a biasing beam and capable of holding the bistable system for a certain range, which we are interested in, from a point that is very close self-switching to a point where the switching is unachievable. The second beam is modulated by passing the first beam through an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) to produce pulses with a minimum rise time and is used as an external source (coherent switching). In this work, we obtained the optical bistable loops by applying absorption coefficient (α) = 20cm-1, e sample etalon thickness (D) = 110μm, forward mirror reflectivity (Rf) = 0.6, and backward mirror reflectivity (Rb) = 0.95. The steady state characteristic of an initial detuning of the cavity (φ0) = 0.8 was studied at the conditions of no external input pulse intensity (M(t) = 0) and switching that takes place at Is(ON)= 0.57mW and Is(OFF) = 0.4mW.
We report the realisation of optically bistable switching and memory elements, and the transphasor Can all-optical transistor) in simple one element nonlinear Fabry-Perot interferometers made from the semiconductor InSb. These devices, which operate at 5 K and 77 K with mW powers from a cw CO laser between 5 and 6 μm rely on a strongly intensity-dependent refractive index discovered near the bandgap region of InSb and explained by bandgap resonant saturation. Switching speeds are shown to be < 500 ns in these first devices and operation to much shorter timescales is predicted. Operation at room temperature and in other semiconductors at other wavelengths remains a possibility and such devices offer considerable potential for all-optical switching in integrated optics and laser pulse control.