Optical bistability in semiconductors

著者: H. M. Gibbs, S. L. McCall, T. Venkatesan, A. C. Gossard, A. Passner, W. Wiegmann - Applied Physics Letters 1979 被引用: 438

Optical bistability has been observed in a semiconductor for the first time. The bistable etalon consists of a GaAlAs-GaAs-GaAlAs molecular-beam-epitaxially-grown sandwich with 90% reflectivity coatings. The bistability is primarily dispersive with the nonlinear refractive index arising from light-induced changes in exciton absorption. Using light of frequency just below the exciton peak, we observed bistability from 5 to 120 °K with 40-ns turn-off and subnanosecond turn-on times with 1 mW/μm2 holding intensity.