Abstract

Recently, thermally induced refractive index changes in semiconductors has been an area of growing interest [1,2]. In this paper we report the first observation of thermal optical bistability at room temperature in a bulk sample of PbSnSe (band gap 5.35 μm) using infrared radiation at 5.4 μm and at 10.6 μm. Bistable switching can be observed at a power level of less than three milliwatts at 5.4 μm as shown in figure 1. The results can be explained by thermal dispersive nonlinearity induced by a thermal shift of the band gap.

© 1985 Optical Society of America