Erbium-ytterbium doped fibre absorption and fluorescence are exploited to realize an optical bistable device. An all-optical flip-flop with 10 ns transition time, 18.48 nJ set and 19.82 nJ reset energies, is experimentally demonstrated.
An all-optical bistable device and an electro-optical bistable device, with performances approaching the fundamental statistical limits, are described. In the all-optical approach, the giant nonlinearities associated with bound excitons in CdS are exploited to demonstrate the lowest-switching-energy (< 4 pJ) all-optical bistable device. The device switches in less than 1 ns and fully recovers in less than 2 ns. These times are detector limited. A switching energy of less than 1 fJ is theoretically predicted for an optimized geometry. In the electro-optical approach, an InGaAsP/InP diode laser amplifier is used to demonstrate bistability with less than 6000 photons (< 8 X 10-16 J) incident on the device. The device switches in less than 1 ns and is cascadable since it has a gain of 100. It operates at room temperature and is compatible with diode laser sources.
We have demonstrated for the first time an all-optical flip-flop based on optical bistability of an integrated SOA/DFB-SOA by applying an input signal with the period of 25.2 ns. An all-optical flip-flop based on optical bistability is expected to process the signal at an ultra-high speed in a light-wave communication. All-optical flip-flop has various applications such as all optical memory, demultiplexing, packet-header buffering, and retiming. Moreover, an integrated SOA/DFBSOA can perform all-optical logic operation and wavelength conversion by cross gain modulation.