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Optics Letters

Optical bistability and multistability in an active interferometer

Junji Ohtsubo, Yun Liu

Published Jul 1, 1990• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optoelectronic hybrid bistability and multistability in an active interferometer using a laser diode are demonstrated experimentally. The active laser-diode interferometer is composed of a Twyman-Green interferometer with an electronic feedback circuit. By feeding back the interferometer output together with an external light input through a detector to control thelaser-diode injection current, the optical bistable and multistable states of the output power from the laser diode are observed. Bistable operation does not require cutoff or saturation in the amplifier. The theoretical background of the phenomena is discussed.

DOI
10.1364/ol.15.000731

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Optoelectronic hybrid bistability and multistability in an active interferometer using a laser diode are demonstrated experimentally. The active laser-diode interferometer is composed of a Twyman-Green interferometer with an electronic feedback circuit. By feeding back the interferometer output together with an external light input through a detector to control thelaser-diode injection current, the optical bistable and multistable states of the output power from the laser diode are observed. Bistable operation does not require cutoff or saturation in the amplifier. The theoretical background of the phenomena is discussed.
We report the demonstration of cascadability in bistable diode laser amplifiers operated below threshold. A schematic of the experimental set-up is shown in Figure 1. There it is shown that the optical input to the first bistable diode laser amplifier is modulated by a mechanical chopper at frequency Ω1. The output from the first bistable diode laser amplifier is then modulated at Ω2= 2Ω1using a second mechanical chopper. The light is thereafter used as the input to the second bistable device. When the input intensity to the second device is higher than a certain threshold, the output switches. These results are shown in Figure 2. For these experiments, each of the bistable diode laser amplifiers were carefully studied. Detailed bistability measurements at different bias currents and different cavity detuning's were performed. It was found that both the bistability loop and the switching power gets larger as the detuning increases. The size of the hysteresis loop also increased as the laser was operated closer to threshold. In a two beam experiment, it was found that the switching power in the data beam can be as small as 25 nW. Gains larger than 1000 have been demonstrated, indicating the large fan-out capability of these devices. The turn-on and turn-off times in these bistable diode laser amplifiers was measured to be faster than 1 ns and detector limited. These bistable diode laser amplifiers are the most efficient optical devices that have yet been demonstrated and will find applications in photonic switching networks.
In this Letter, we present a detailed theoretical and experimental investigation of optical bistability and tristability in dual injection-locked Fabry-Perot laser diodes. The proposed device can be reconfigured between the bistable and tristable regimes, simply by adjusting the power level of the injected control optical signal. The tristability presented in the experiment is achieved for relatively low optical input powers between 1.03 and 1.25 mW, with the output signal ratio of up to 7 dB between stable states. Such a device is a potential candidate for designing trits, a bit analogy in ternary computational logic.
We present a review of optical bistability in active and passive optoelectronic devices, with particular reference to switching speeds and powers. The large resonant nonlinearities available near the bandgaps of semiconductors may be utilized to develop bistable devices operating at low powers and high speeds. Passive devices are driven by external optical sources and include nonlinear etalons, nonlinear interfaces, self-focusing configurations and electro-optic modulators with electrical feedback. Active devices include injection lasers and superluminescent amplifiers. Potential advantages of active devices include speed, gain, sensitivity and the ability to drive other devices, but complexity and high power dissipation may limit their use in applications requiring high density.
A novel hybrid semiconductor device is presented which shows optical bistability and a clear optical multistability at milliwatt input powers. Experimentally, a silicon etalon is used as a Fabry-Perot interferometer where an electric field is additionally applied by using integrated electrical contacts. At 1.06 μm the device exhibits the combined properties of a photodetector and an optical modulator. Due to this self-electro-optic effect a large optical nonlinearity is achieved which is theoretically attributed to electrical and optical heating of the sample.