Abstract

Mirrorless (cavityless) optical bistability (OB), due to temperature-dependent renormalization of the absorption peak of the bound exciton resonance in CdS has been observed and interpreted¹ in terms of coupling between the internal field intensity and the temperature in the nonlinear material. It was shown² that the heat conductivity boundary conditions determine the conditions for bistability of a sample of the material. In fact, we showed earlier that when the boundary conditions at the ends of the sample are such that the heat resistance at the exit end H_L = h_1/3 where h_o is the heat resistance at the entrance face, two hysteresis curves result, one clockwise with increasing input intensity at lower incident fields due to increasing absorption and the other at higher field values due to decreasing absorption which is counter-clockwise, Figures 1a and 1b.

© 1985 Optical Society of America