GaAs/A1GaAs epitaxial structures allow the fabrication of monolithic bistable devices with very appealing characteristics for all-optical switching applications, such aslow threshold power and good thermal stability. They rely upon the excitonic and band-gap resonant nonlinearities in bulk GaAs or MQW. Very compact devices of a few micron size with A1As/A1GaAs integrated Bragg reflectors can be grown during a single epitaxial process. We report linear and nonlinear reflectivity measurements on such a monolithic étalon with a MQW active layer grown by MOVPE. A bistability power threshold lower than 3 mW at 836 nm was observed with a reflective contrast ratio as high as 30: 1 .We show evidence that the refractive index dependence on optical intensity is strongly sublinear, indicating that a substantial degree of saturation occurs at intensity levels of iO W/cm2. We discuss the origin of this saturation and its implications on the design of future devices.

Date Published: 1 August 1990
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 1280, High Speed Phenomena in Photonic Materials and Optical Bistability, (1 August 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.20659

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1280:
High Speed Phenomena in Photonic Materials and Optical Bistability
Dieter Jaeger, Editor(s)