Mirrorless optical bistability of an ultrathin glassy film built up of oriented J-aggregates: Effects of two-exciton states and exciton-exciton annihilation

We theoretically analyze the optical response of an ultrathin film with acc ounting for the effects of creating two exciton states as well as their ann ihilation in an individual aggregate. We show that these two processes do n ot violate mirrorless optical bistability of the film found in the framewor k of the ground-to-one exciton state transitions but, contrary to that, act towards improving the conditions for bistability to occur. In particular, the killing action of inhomogeneous broadening of the one-exciton absorptio n spectrum may be considerably reduced due to the exciton-exciton annihilat ion process giving hope for creating a unit for an all-optical device based on such systems. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.