Instability and transient responses of an electrooptic bistable device

Comprehensive descriptions are given for the instability of a mirrorless electrooptic bistable device having two feedback voltages with different time constants, and the analytical results are applied to control electrically the transient responses of the device, including optical regenerative oscillation, monostable or inverse monostable pulse generation, and high-speed switching between two stable states with the smaller switching energy compared with the conventional device. The effects of the time constants, the ratio of the two feedback signals, and the biasing electric signal on these transient phenomena are discussed in detail theoretically and experimentally. The feasibility of frequency modulation and pulsewidth modulation of optical regenerative oscillation is also suggested.