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Applied Physics Letters

Monochromatic all-optical gate with 1 ps response time

Jerome Paye, Daniele Hulin

Published Mar 22, 1993• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A semiconductor nonlinear Fabry–Perot based on the optical Stark nonlinearity is designed as an optical gate. The device is driven by 1.2 ps light pulses with a spectrum narrower than the transmission resonance peak of the device to allow cascaded operation. One picosecond switching-on and -off times are demonstrated with 5:1 contrast ratio, in single-wavelength operation. Owing to its planar structure and ultrafast switching time, this device is the fastest all-optical gate for monochromatic parallel processing ever reported.

DOI
10.1063/1.108719

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A semiconductor nonlinear Fabry–Perot based on the optical Stark nonlinearity is designed as an optical gate. The device is driven by 1.2 ps light pulses with a spectrum narrower than the transmission resonance peak of the device to allow cascaded operation. One picosecond switching-on and -off times are demonstrated with 5:1 contrast ratio, in single-wavelength operation. Owing to its planar structure and ultrafast switching time, this device is the fastest all-optical gate for monochromatic parallel processing ever reported.
Most of the intrinsic optical devices which have been studied in recent years consist of a Fabry-Perot resonator containing a nonlinear medium. The response time of such devices is determined by the transients associated with the high-Q resonator and the response time of the nonlinear medium. The fastest devices must be free of any Fabry-Perot cavity. The excitation of either surface plasmons at a nonlinear interface or guided waves in thin nonlinear films is a way to obtain an ultrafast bistable optical device. These two kinds of device have been studied.
Nonlinear semiconductor waveguides are investigated with respect to their use for optical bistability and temporal optical switching with results given for silicon-on-sapphire devices. The performance of the waveguides is assessed with comparisons to nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavities, and the conditions for optical bistability are theoretically shown to be possible by combining a waveguide and a diffraction-grating coupler. Structures experimentally investigated include semiconductor layers epitaxially grown on substrates having low refractive indices. Optical switching is reported on reflected or transmitted beams and on the guided-wave intensity by means of excitation pulses in the nanosecond or picosecond range. The data confirm the usefulness of nonlinear waveguides as alternative devices for temporal optical switching and logic-gate development in part due to their good switching times.
Optical bistable elements may be attractive in all-optical regenerators as an alternative to electronic regenerators1 provided they are able to handle signals with bit rates in the Gbit/s range. The bistable Fabry-Perot (F.P.) laser amplifier has many desirable properties, e.g., optical gain, room temperature operation,, and low switching energy (fJ).2 Bistability at up to 250 Mbit/s has been predicted for antireflection coated laser amplifiers.1 Here we report measurements of switching times of ~1 ns for a 1.3-μm F.P. laser amplifier, which are verified numerically. For antireflection coated amplifiers, switching times of 230-250 ps, suggesting transmission rates of up to ~2 Gbit/s, are predicted.
A possible device concept for photonic switching is the crossed resonator in which two Fabry-Perot resonators with perpendicular cavity axes enclose a nonlinear medium. Light entering one of the cavities can modify the light exiting the other cavity by altering the refractive index of the medium. This configuration has been proposed for use as an optical logic gate.1 In this work we also demonstrate its potential as an optical switch and transistor. We model the device following the single Fabry-Perot cavity work for steady-state fields of Miller2 and for pulsed inputs following Bischofberger and Shen.3 We assume the medium has a Kerr nonlinearity with an intensity-independent background absorption. Using parameters for the organic polymer polydiacetylene (PTS) etched into an optical waveguide, we find differential gains of greater than three for steady-state input fields of reasonable powers and that this device in certain regimes behaves like an optical transistor. For the time-dependent case, we model the medium temporal response by the Debye equation using the medium response time for PTS. We present results for input pulses of varying intensity and duration.