F. Jeannes et al., SUBMILLIWATT OPTICAL BISTABILITY IN WAFER FUSED VERTICAL-CAVITY AT 1.55-MU-M WAVELENGTH, IEEE photonics technology letters, 8(4), 1996, pp. 539-541
We report on low-power optical bistability in a vertical cavity struct
ure at 1.55-mu m wavelength due to the bandgap resonant dispersive opt
ical nonlinearity of InGaAsP, In this structure, a GaAs-AlAs Bragg ref
lector grown on GaAs and the nonlinear medium grown on InP are bonded
through waferfusion, leading to a high-quality vertical cavity after d
eposition of a top dielectric mirror. This device shows interesting ch
aracteristics for optical switching applications at fiber communicatio
n wavelengths, such as a switching contrast higher than 8:1 in the ref
lective mode and a bistability threshold power as low as 0.6 mW. True
steady-state memory effect is observed with continuous-wave input, and
the device switching time is in the ns range.