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Topical Meeting on Optical Bistability (OB)

Resonant Frustrated Total Reflection (FTR) Approach to Optical Bistability in Semiconductors.

Bruno Bosacchi, Lorenzo M. Narducci

Published Jan 1, 1983• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The recent observation of very large non-linearities and of optical bistability in semiconductor structures at room temperature has heightened the interest in all-optical switching and signal processing as a practical prospect in optical information technology. Along with the search for suitable non-linear materials, some attention is also being paid to the study of structural configurations designed to optimize the performance of a bistable device. In this paper we will discuss the resonant FTR (Frustrated Total Reflection) approach, as an experimental configuration fully compatible with semiconductor and integrated optics technologies, which should lower the power requirements of a bistable device through the "enhancement" of the optical field inside its non-linear region.

DOI
10.1364/obi.1983.thb8

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The recent observation of very large non-linearities and of optical bistability in semiconductor structures at room temperature has heightened the interest in all-optical switching and signal processing as a practical prospect in optical information technology. Along with the search for suitable non-linear materials, some attention is also being paid to the study of structural configurations designed to optimize the performance of a bistable device. In this paper we will discuss the resonant FTR (Frustrated Total Reflection) approach, as an experimental configuration fully compatible with semiconductor and integrated optics technologies, which should lower the power requirements of a bistable device through the "enhancement" of the optical field inside its non-linear region.
Gives a broad description of optical bistability: from practical applications, as an optical transistor or optical memory element, to its phase transition interpretation. The theory is divided into three parts. The first is a simple discussion that covers most of the basic experimental effects and concepts of practical importance. The second part applies to atomic system where a semiclassical as well as a quantum-mechanical approach is possible. The third one discusses the mechanisms compatible with large nonlinearities observed in InSb and GaAs as semiconductors constitute the most promising materials for applications. Current experimental progress in all-optical and hybrid devices is also discussed and scaling example is presented to indicate the possibilities in high-speed all-optical signal processing.
Photonic data transmission and processing require highly efficient all-optical elements for signal amplification, switching and data storage. It could be shown experimentally that semiconductor planar resonators can be envisaged as promising candidates [1]. In particular, optical bistability, that has been shown to exist in these configurations, opens a wide field of applications. Because the operating frequencies are near the band gap of the direct semiconductors used the nonlinearities are giant. Hence the critical power for nonlinear effects to occur is fairly moderate. In view of these advantages it might be worthwhile to study such resonators in a waveguide scheme because it can be included into integrated optics configurations. In planar resonators one has not to worry about the absorption, being extremely large near the gap, because the overall thickness is only a few micrometers and they are usually operated in reflection. The situation appears more involved in waveguides. Usually one prefers to exploit the transmitted signal in order to separate input and output channels. Moreover the efficiency of the distributed Bragg reflectors, surrounding the cavity, is usually some orders of magnitude less than that of conventional planar mirrors requiring rather long reflectors. Because the cavity length exceeds that of planar resonators considerably too one has to guarantee that the overwhelming part of the resonator is essentially transparent for the guided mode. This has of course the consequence that it does not contribute to any resonant nonlinear effect. Hence we propose a resonator that is only loaded by a thin layer of nonlinear but absorbing material (GaAs) in the cavity region (see Fig.1).
Semiconductors exhibit large optical nonlinearities near the band edge because of resonance enhancement. Optical bistability occurs when the optical nonlinearities are coupled with feedback. In bulk GaAs and GaAs–AlGaAs multiple-quantum-well superlattices, the nonlinearity arising from the presence of the free-exciton resonance has produced room-temperature optical bistability with a few milliwatts of power. The formation of biexcitons in CuCl, the saturation of the bound exciton on CdS, and band-filling effects in InSb, InAs, and HgCdTe lead to observation of bistability in these materials. A bistable etalon can be operated in an optical-gate mode to generate optical analogs of electronic gates such as and, or, and nor. It has been demonstrated that a GaAs optical NOR gate responds in ∼1 psec, using only ≲3 pJ of energy. However, because of the carrier lifetime of a few nanoseconds, the repetition rate of the NOR gate is now limited to a few hundred megahertz.