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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Thermal dispersive optical bistability and absorptive bistability in bulk ZnSe

Ajoy Kumar Kar, B. S. Wherrett

Published Feb 1, 1986• 50 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report successive refractive and then absorptive optical bistability in bulk ZnSe at room temperature, at 35- and 300-mW power levels, respectively, for the 476-nm argon-ion laser line. Analysis shows the results to be consistent with the observed thermal shift of the interband absorption. These first observations of dispersive bistability in bulk ZnSe occur in lowest order for temperature changes as low as 2 K; many bistable orders are obtained.

DOI
10.1364/josab.3.000345

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We report successive refractive and then absorptive optical bistability in bulk ZnSe at room temperature, at 35- and 300-mW power levels, respectively, for the 476-nm argon-ion laser line. Analysis shows the results to be consistent with the observed thermal shift of the interband absorption. These first observations of dispersive bistability in bulk ZnSe occur in lowest order for temperature changes as low as 2 K; many bistable orders are obtained.
First reports of absorptive all-optical bistabilities in reflectance and luminescence of a Fabry-Perot cavity consisting of thin (0.70 ,cem) ZnSe film are presented. We demonstrate that the observation of bistability in the reflected beam does not require necessarily the appearance of bistability in the transmitted beam. Luminescence bistabilities, however, are observed both in the light captured Lrom the incident side 0L the film and in the light emitted from the transmission side. The bistabilities in reflection and luminescence are explained quite satisfactorily by the principle of increasing absorption due to photo-irradiation and the dependence of the luminescence intensity on a photo-thermally induced temperature change, respectively. A11 experiments were carried out at room temperature with the 488 nm line of an argon laser.
For the first time, ZnSe epitaxial layers grown by molecular-beam epitaxy are shown to exhibit large contrast, low power, and extremely long-term stable thermally induced absorptive optical bistability. It is observed over a wide temperature range between 169 K and RT, with a strongly variable loop width and a switch-back adjustable to be less than 50% of the respective switch-down value. Critical slowing down as well as switch-down times are studied in dependence of the excess over the switch-down intensity values.
We observe and compare conditions for cw optical bistability in both thermal-vacuum-deposited and molecular beam grown ZnSe-based interference filters, at He–Ne-laser (633-nm), Kr (647-nm), and Ar-ion (514-nm) wave-lengths. Bistability is observed at 514 and 647 nm and, by inference, should be observable at a number of intervening wavelengths for a single molecular-beam-grown sample. From our theoretical analysis we also demonstrate that observed drift instabilities in filter nonlinear responses correlate with the highest internal irradiance levels.