Abstract

Optical signal processing using all-optical circuitry is an increasingly attractive goal with the recent progress in long- lived light sources, high quantum efficiency detectors, and low- loss high-bandwidth optical fibers. Devices which permit one light beam to control another or which provide an optical memory afford a capability essential to the success of all-optical logic systems. Much progress has been made toward practical bistable¹ devices since the first observation² of optical bistability in sodium vapor. (By optical bistability we refer to devices containing no inverted medium, so that bistable lasers³ are explicitly excluded.) The most practical device so far, a semiconductor etalon consisting of 4 μm of GaAs between 0.2 μm of Al_0.42Ga_0.53As with R = 0.9 coatings, is described herein.

© 1980 Optical Society of America