Applied Physics Letters

Optical bistability in semiconductors

H. M. Gibbs, S. L. McCall, Thirumalai Venkatesan, Arthur C. Gossard, A. Passner, W. Wiegmann

Published Sep 15, 1979• 443 citations

Abstract

Optical bistability has been observed in a semiconductor for the first time. The bistable etalon consists of a GaAlAs-GaAs-GaAlAs molecular-beam-epitaxially-grown sandwich with 90% reflectivity coatings. The bistability is primarily dispersive with the nonlinear refractive index arising from light-induced changes in exciton absorption. Using light of frequency just below the exciton peak, we observed bistability from 5 to 120 °K with 40-ns turn-off and subnanosecond turn-on times with 1 mW/μm2 holding intensity.

DOI: 10.1063/1.91157

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