Bistabilities of Birefringent Vertical-Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers With Antiresonant Reflecting Optical Waveguide

Bistable characteristics of birefringent antiresonant reflecting-optical-waveguide (ARROW) vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifiers (VCSOA) under external optical injection with multi-mode profile and arbitrary polarization orientation are investigated theoretically. It is found that the presence of ARROW can realize stable single-mode bistable switching in VCSOAs. Furthermore, with suitable design of the bias current profile, it can be shown that ARROW VCSOAs with a large core diameter (i.e., ges 50 mum) can sustain stable single-mode bistable switching.