Optical bistability in a distributed resonator with a nonlinear absorber

F. T. Arecchi, Antonio Politi

Meir Orenstein, Jacob Katriel, Shammai Speiser

A recently developed nonlinear complex eikonal approximation which was previously employed to the study of dispersively nonlinear resonators is applied to absorptively nonlinear resonator configurations. The nonlinear absorption is introduced phenomenologically, encompassing a large variety of intensity-dependent absorption mechanisms. Conditions for obtaining optical bistability are derived. Dynamically increasing absorption was not considered, and optical bistability in free propagation was not obtained.

Masahiro Okuda, Kiyoshi Onaka

The effect of the bleaching property of a saturable absorber and the optical loss in a corrugated waveguide on bistability is analyzed by using the coupled-mode theory. Hysteresis and nonlinear properties are given as a function of the quantities characterizing the saturable absorber (the absorption coefficient Γ 0 , and the length of saturable absorber l ) and the propagation characteristics of the corrugated waveguide (the coupling coefficient k and the optical loss in waveguide Γ). It is clear, by selecting the optimum values of these parameters., that the saturable optical resonator has a bistable property which is useful as an optical gate, an optical amplifier, and an optical memory in integrated optical circuits.

Li Wei, Shaowen Song, You‐Nian Wang

Meir Orenstein, Jacob Katriel, Shammai Speiser

The recently developed nonlinear complex eikonal approximation, which was previously employed to study dispersively nonlinear resonators, is applied to absorptively nonlinear resonator configurations. Conditions for obtaining optical bistability in molecular absorbers are derived and the photophysical consequences are discussed.

Ulf Peschel, Dirk Michaelis, Thomas Peschel +1 more