Abstract

Thin-film semiconductor Fabry-Perot interferometers with nonlinear intermediate layers are of particular interest as components for optical data processing since under certain conditions they can perform optical switching and modulation. The principle of such operations is the sweeping of the cavity transmission (or reflection) peak in response to control pulses. For a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity, a small change in the intracavity refractive index can translate into a large change in the cavity reflection and transmission. Optical bistability in thin-film interferometers (TFIs) with semiconductor intermediate layers of ZnS, ZnSe etc., synthesised by thermal deposition and molecular beam epitaxy, have been achieved earlier by a long-wavelength shift of the transmission profile due to the thermo-optic nonlinearity mechanism with microsecond relaxation times [1, 2].

© 1996 IEEE