ALGAAS BELOW HALF BANDGAP - THE SILICON OF NONLINEAR-OPTICAL MATERIALS

Very few nonlinear optical materials are actually useful for high thro ughput all-optical devices. However, AlGaAs does satisfy all of the no nlinear optical figures of merit when used with photons of energy less than one half the semiconductor bandgap. Here we review our measureme nts of the pertinent nonlinear coefficients in waveguides and various device applications to all-optical switching in the communications ban d around 1550 nm.