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Physical Review A

Nonlinear all-optical switch based on a white-light cavity

Na Li, Jingping Xu, Ge Song, Chengjie Zhu, Shuangyuan Xie, Yaping Yang, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy, Shi‐Yao Zhu

Published Apr 12, 2016• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is well known that there is a bottleneck for nonlinear all-optical switching, namely, the switching power and the switching time cannot be lowered simultaneously. A lower switching power requires a resonator with a high quality ($Q$) factor, but leads to a longer switching time. We propose to overcome this bottleneck by replacing the nonlinear cavity in such an all-optical switch by a white-light cavity. This can be done by doping three-level atoms in the ring resonator and applying incoherent pump and coherent driving fields on it. The white-light cavity possesses broadband resonance in a linear region. Therefore, for the incident pulse, a broad range of frequency components can take part in the nonlinear process, and so it requires lower power to achieve switching compared to the conventional ring resonator. On the other hand, the refractive index of a white-light cavity has negative dispersion, leading to a fast group velocity. This results in a shorter time to build up the resonant response, yielding a short switching time.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.043819

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It is well known that there is a bottleneck for nonlinear all-optical switching, namely, the switching power and the switching time cannot be lowered simultaneously. A lower switching power requires a resonator with a high quality (QQQ) factor, but leads to a longer switching time. We propose to overcome this bottleneck by replacing the nonlinear cavity in such an all-optical switch by a white-light cavity. This can be done by doping three-level atoms in the ring resonator and applying incoherent pump and coherent driving fields on it. The white-light cavity possesses broadband resonance in a linear region. Therefore, for the incident pulse, a broad range of frequency components can take part in the nonlinear process, and so it requires lower power to achieve switching compared to the conventional ring resonator. On the other hand, the refractive index of a white-light cavity has negative dispersion, leading to a fast group velocity. This results in a shorter time to build up the resonant response, yielding a short switching time.
Achieving low power consumption and ultrafast response simultaneously remains a major challenge in all-optical switching technology. In this work, we propose and theoretically demonstrate a novel all-optical switch based on a passive white-light coupled ring resonator. Unlike conventional white-light cavity schemes that rely on negative-dispersion media and external pump fields, the proposed design exploits passive coupling and cavity-phase engineering to induce broadband resonance and effective phase compensation. This enables all-optical switching with significantly reduced threshold power and shortened response time, while maintaining structural simplicity and operational stability. Compared with classical white-light cavity switches, the passive design not only eliminates the demand to fill negative dispersion media but also offers enhanced robustness and feasibility for photonic integration. The proposed architecture provides a promising route toward high-performance all-optical computing and optical communication systems.
We propose a device whose reflectivity can be controlled optically over a wide frequency band. To this objective, we propose a Fabry-P\'erot cavity filled with a three-level atomic gas such that the effective susceptibility can be adjusted through incoherent pump and coherent driving fields. Adopting the concepts of electromagnetic-induced transparency and the white light cavity, we can control the susceptibility to break or satisfy the resonance condition over a wide frequency range, resulting in a wide-band optical switch. In addition to numerical calculation, we first give the analytical parameters, such as pump rate, and the Rabi frequency of the driven field, required for white light cavity in this paper. Using such a cavity as a wall of another cavity, we can, optically, realize a wide-band QQQ-switched cavity. Such a device can also be used as a new type of optical switch for quantum information.
We experimentally demonstrate that broad, tunable bandwidth of an optical ring cavity can be achieved by making use of the negative dispersion of the Kerr nonlinear refractive index in the three-level electromagnetically-induced transparency medium. For a given cavity field intensity, the white-light cavity condition can always be satisfied by choosing the appropriate coupling beam parameters. This white-light cavity scheme can be used effectively to achieve large buildup intensity in the signal-recycling cavity with a broad bandwidth in future advanced gravitational wave detectors.
One of the major challenges in realizing practical all-optical switching devices is the need for strong and fast material nonlinearity. The use of resonance-enhanced nonlinear effects in optical cavities has been explored as a promising way to lower the switching power. This paper provides numerically investigation of resonator-enhanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer all-optical switch by employing a nonlinear ratio-variable coupler with the merits of easy fabrication and excellent nonlinear optical controllability. This performs nonlinear optical switching with advantages of hundreds tW low switching threshold, steady switch ON/OFF states and a wide wavelength range by combining the high nonlinearity of ring and adjustable coupling ratio of RVC. Resonator finesse is controllable by incident power with potential applications in controllable photonic devices. Some undesirable effects involving attenuation, group delay and partial coherence lead to increase of switching power and low extinction ratio. Optical bistability and instability do not limit practical applications in optical switch. A desired tradeoff between response time and switching power can be achieved by controlling finesse. Picosecond ultrafast all-optical switch is predicted.
We experimentally demonstrate an all-optical switching (AOS) scheme based on double slow light (DSL) pulses, in which one pulse is switched by another due to the cross-Kerr nonlinearity. The interaction time is prolonged by optically dense atomic media and matched group velocities. The interaction strength is maintained at a high level by keeping both fields at their electromagnetically-induced-transparency resonances to minimize the linear loss. In the AOS without the DSL scheme, the group velocity mismatch sets an upper limit on the switching efficiency of two photons per atomic cross section as discussed by Harris and Hau [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4611 (1999)]. Compared to that limit, we have obtained an enhanced switching efficiency by a factor of 3 with our DSL scheme. The nonlinear efficiency can be further improved by increasing the optical depth of the medium. Our work advances low-light-level nonlinear optics and provides essential ingredients for quantum many-body physics using strongly interacting photons.
Summary form only given. The reduced absorption and enhanced nonlinearity in a three-level electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) system are very important in achieving an effective all-optical switching action. The Kerr-nonlinear index of refraction of a three-level EIT medium can be greatly enhanced near resonance due to atomic coherence induced in such a system in comparison with a two-level atomic system, as we have shown by using an optical ring cavity. Both the magnitude and sign of the Kerr-nonlinear index change dramatically for different frequency detunings of the controlling (or coupling) or cavity (or probe) field. Bistability and dynamic instability occur when such a three-level /spl Lambda/-type EIT system is placed inside an optical ring cavity and the controlling and cavity input intensities to exceed certain threshold values. In this paper, we present a recent experimental demonstration of controlling the cavity output intensity by modulating the frequency detuning of the controlling beam.