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Topical Meeting on Optical Bistability (OB)

External Grating Couplers on Planar Waveguides as Integrated Optical Bistable Devices

V. Briguet, J. Kramer, W. Lukosz

Published Jan 1, 1988• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The 'external' grating coupler is a diffraction grating pressed against the planar waveguide in a similar way as a prism coupler. Such couplers have, to the best of our knowledge, not been used in integrated optics. The couplers normally used are surface relief gratings on the waveguide. We report on a new type of optical bistability (OB) which occurs only with external but not with normal grating couplers. The air gap of width d, where 0≤d≤λ, plays an essential role in the OB mechanism.

DOI
10.1364/obi.1988.wd.7

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Topical Meeting on Optical Bistability (OB)•Jan 1, 1985•0 citations
The 'external' grating coupler is a diffraction grating pressed against the planar waveguide in a similar way as a prism coupler. Such couplers have, to the best of our knowledge, not been used in integrated optics. The couplers normally used are surface relief gratings on the waveguide. We report on a new type of optical bistability (OB) which occurs only with external but not with normal grating couplers. The air gap of width d, where 0≤d≤λ, plays an essential role in the OB mechanism.
We have identified photothermal displacement as a mechanism for optical bistability (OB) in prism coupling into absorbing planar waveguides: heating by the absorbed incoupled power causes a buckling of the waveguide, a reduction in air-gap width, and thus an increase in incoupling efficiency and a positive feedback. We developed a theory of this OB that qualitatively agrees well with experimental results obtained by coupling argon-laser light into indium-tin oxide layers as strongly absorbing waveguides. This new OB is quite different from dispersive OB in prism or grating couplers caused by a power-dependent effective guide index.
A new use of gratings in nonlinear optics is presented, i.e., the realization of bistable components. The device studied here consist of grating couplers ruled on a Kerr nonlinear medium, which use the guided-wave resonance to increase the local field and thus the nonlinearities. The result is that they are intrinsic bistable optical systems with high-speed, low pumping thresholds, and geometry well adapted to optical integration. First, a linear electromagnetic study of the devices is presented. It follows optimizing the grating parameters in order to get the best coupling between the incident beam and the guided mode inside the corrugated waveguide. Then a graphical construction is given that demonstrates the bistable character of the system in nonlinear optics. Next a nonlinear analysis of the devices is rigorously derived from Maxwell equations. It states precisely the predictions of the graphical construction and allows comparison of the effectiveness of the guided-wave resonance with the surface plasmon resonance in order to reduce the threshold of bistability.
We consider grating induced optical bistability (OB) arising from the resonant excitation of a given nonlinear guided mode. In that case it can be shown, using the coupled-mode formalismi(1), that in the whole bistable domain : a) the transverse field map of the resonantly excited nonlinear guided mode corresponds to that of the associated linear one which is known. b) the Kerr-type nonlinearity only modifies the longitudinal wavevector component. Thus the rigorous theory of diffraction(2), previously used to study grating-induced plane wave OB(3), can be replaced by a much more simple one which works as follows : i) determine the complex longitudinal wavevector component of the linear leaky guided mode p, βpL, through the solution of the associated linear homogeneous grating problem(2), ii) use the rigorous theory of diffraction in linear optics(2) to determine the in-coupling efficiency, tp, of the incident plane wave, iii) use the coupled-mode formalism to derive the analytical expression(4) of the complex nonlinear longitudinal wavevector component βpNL.
We have demonstrated a new mechanism for bistability in integrated optics, viz., light-induced-desorption of molecules from the waveguide surface by which the effective guide index N is changed. Bistability occurs if the desorption rate depends linearly on the incoupled power P' in an input coupler device (see Fig.1), and on the intracavity power in an IO Fabry Perot or ring resonator. This follows theoretically from an analysis analogous to that of the bistable radiation pressure driven waveguide pendulum.1