1.55 μm optical bistability has been observed in a Gain As/AlInAs MQW etalon at room temperature, and we have shown that the nonlinear mechanism responsible for the bistability is due to an electronic nonlinearity in the refractive index.
The authors report on the fabrication of devices assembled in one unit and the observation of thermal optical bistability with low threshold and high reproducibility using the low-energy side of a 1.54- mu m etalon peak. The devices are InGaAs/InAlAs multi-quantum-well (MQW) nonlinear etalons, whose finesse of 20 was obtained by using a SiO/sub 2//TiO/sub 2/ high-reflectivity coating. The authors also show that the nonlinear characteristics depend on the wavelength of the incident light detuned from the etalon peak. The relation between optical bistable characteristics and incident beam wavelength is studied in detail using a tunable F-center laser.>
An analysis of static room-temperature-operation characteristics of a reflection-mode semiconductor multiple-quantum well etalon by a simplified two-level system formula of optical nonlinear properties and a computer simulation is presented. In the calculation for a GaAs/AlGaAs multiple-quantum-well etalon using the parameters reported in experimental measurement, it is shown that the very large excitonic optical nonlinearity is not effectively utilized for the optical bistable operation. This occurs because the effective positive-feedback mechanism which increases the etalon internal light intensity is suppressed when a hardly saturable background interband absorption tail is larger than a few thousand cm/sup -1/ at a wavelength where the large excitonic dispersive nonlinearity is observed.>