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Topical Meeting on Optical Bistability (OB)

Bistable Optical Device Using Guided Mode Excitation in Silicon on Sapphire

Fabrice Pardo, A. Köster, H. Chelli, Nicole A. Paraire, S. Laval

Published Jan 1, 1985• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The device uses a cristalline silicon film, grown an a sapphire substrate, as nonlinear material. The film is considered as an optical waveguide, in which the excitation light is coupled by a diffraction grating etched on the silicon surface. The grating is covered with a silver layer to get better field enhancement in the waveguide. Light is then incident through the sapphire substrate. For an incidence angle slightly different from the resonance value, the guided mode is weakly excited at low incident power. As power increases, refractive index variations yield better excitation of the mode and bistable operation is predicted.

DOI
10.1364/obi.1985.wa3

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The device uses a cristalline silicon film, grown an a sapphire substrate, as nonlinear material. The film is considered as an optical waveguide, in which the excitation light is coupled by a diffraction grating etched on the silicon surface. The grating is covered with a silver layer to get better field enhancement in the waveguide. Light is then incident through the sapphire substrate. For an incidence angle slightly different from the resonance value, the guided mode is weakly excited at low incident power. As power increases, refractive index variations yield better excitation of the mode and bistable operation is predicted.
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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.