Optical bistability during the excitation of a nonlinear corrugated waveguide

Marc Haelterman, Guy Vitrant, R. Reinisch

Y.J. Li, Jiangtao Fan, Anbang Lu +8 more

I A Avrutskiĭ, Vladimir A. Sychugov

An analysis is made of anomalous reflection of light from the surface of a corrugated waveguide when the refractive index of the waveguide layer depends on the radiation power. It is shown that bistable reflection of light is possible if the deviation from the optimal excitation of the waveguide is selected suitably. Estimates are obtained of the power required for bistable operation in multilayer waveguide structures composed partly of GaAs–AlGaAs superlattices.

Jun Liao, X.J. Zhang, Fei Xu +3 more

Hassan Akhouayri, M. Nevière, P. Vincent

Bistable optical systems are of considerable interest to produce high-speed optical signal-processing devices. Among them, those that use a nonlinear optical medium are attractive because they allow the lowest possible switching time. By the use of a suitable electromagnetic resonance, the bistability threshold can be lowered to a reasonnable value, for the incident power. Keeping in mind that a bistable optical system should be well adapted to optical integration in a planar geometry, one is naturally confronted to a corrugated waveguide filled with a nonlinear (Kerr) medium.

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.