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The Review of Laser Engineering

Optically Bistable Device Using a Laser Diode and an Er-Doped YAG.

Yoshinobu Maeda

Published Jan 1, 1993• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optical signal inverter and memory were demonstrated through a purely optical approach in a simple structure composed of a laser diode and an Er-doped YAG crystal.The intensity of an output laser transmitted through the Er:YAG was suddenly decreased by increasing the injection current to put the oscillation wavelength of the laser close to the central absorption peak of the Er:YAG at 787.6nm.In addition, the transmission of the Er:YAG versus injection current characteristics showed hysteresis and optical bistability.These effects were caused by the red shift and the hysteresis of the wavelength of the laser diode against the injection current.With the use of these effects, the optical signal inverter and memory were realized at a response time of 100ps.

DOI
10.2184/lsj.21.5_577

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Optical signal inverter and memory were demonstrated through a purely optical approach in a simple structure composed of a laser diode and an Er-doped YAG crystal.The intensity of an output laser transmitted through the Er:YAG was suddenly decreased by increasing the injection current to put the oscillation wavelength of the laser close to the central absorption peak of the Er:YAG at 787.6nm.In addition, the transmission of the Er:YAG versus injection current characteristics showed hysteresis and optical bistability.These effects were caused by the red shift and the hysteresis of the wavelength of the laser diode against the injection current.With the use of these effects, the optical signal inverter and memory were realized at a response time of 100ps.
An optical signal inverter was demonstrated with a combination of the following two effects: One is the decrease of the transmission of an Er-doped YAG crystal with increasing red shift of a laser diode resulting from an increase in the injection current, and the other is a negative nonlinear absorption in which the transmission decreases inversely with increasing laser intensity. Because a hysteresis characteristic exists in the relationship between the wavelength and the injection current of the laser diode, an optical bistability was observed in this system.
Optical bistability was observed in a simple structure of an injection laser diode combined with an erbium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystal. Since a hysteresis characteristic exists in the relationship between the wavelength and the injection current of a laser diode, an optical memory function capable of holding the output status is confirmed. In addition, an optical signal inversion was caused by the decrease of transmission of the erbium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystal against the red shift (principally mode hopping) of the laser diode. It is suggested that the switching time of this phenomenon is the time necessary for a mode hopping by current injection.
Using a modulated laser diode, dependence of a negative nonlinear absorption effect on both the wavelength and the sample length was observed in an erbium doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystal which has a four-level energy structure. The effect was seen at wavelengths of 787.4 to 788.6 nm in excited state absorption spectra which showed a peak corresponding to the transition from 4 I 13/2 to 2 H 11/2 in Er3+ for sample lengths greater than 2.0 mm. An optical signal inverter which had a negative input-output characteristic was realized using the negative nonlinear absorption effect.
A negative input-output characteristic was obtained in an erbium doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystal which has multiple-level energy structure: absorption can occur between a ground level and an excited level (4I15/2-4I9/2) and between two other excited levels (4I13/2-2H11/2) in Er3+. It was caused at the wavelength between 786.6 and 788.4nm by the variation of incident laser intensity in the intensity range of 60 nW/cm2 to 100 W/cm2. It is considered that an enhanced absorption occurs due to the excited state absorption from 4I13/2 to 2H11/2. Because its spectra match the wavelength dependence of the incident laser. In addition, optical signal inverter phenomenon was observed using a laser diode modulated with 10 MHz. By considering multiple excited state absorption in detail, active functions such as an optical signal inverter could be derived from the negative nonlinear absorption effect.
Summary form only given. We report results of an experiment in which the output of a single-mode diode laser is injected into a diode laser amplifier operated close to its lasing threshold. The injected light is periodically modulated at frequencies very slow compared with the relevant relaxation frequencies within the amplifier. In contrast to most experiments, we operate the amplifier in a reflection mode instead of the transmission mode. Under the influence of the periodic modulation, the amplifier output exhibits several novel types of hysteresis and associated bistable behavior.
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.