Title :
Nonlinearity of liquefying gallium: controlling light with light at milliwatt power levels
Author :
Bennett, P.J. ; Dhanjal, Surinder ; Petropoulos, P. ; Richardson, D.J. ; Zheludev, Nikolay I.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Phys. & Astron., Southampton Univ., UK
Abstract :
Summary form only given.We have recently demonstrated that the reflectivity of a metallic gallium-glass interface shows a strong change and a noticeable hysteresis in the melting-cooling cycle and that such hysteresis can be considerably modified by continuous wave optical stimulation at intensities of a few kW/cm/sup 2/. Here we demonstrate that the nonresonant nonlinear mechanism is fully reversible with a fast recovery time. This nonlinearity has been used to achieve a truly practical all-optical switching with milliwatt switching powers, submicrosecond response times, which could be used from visible to IR spectral regions.
Keywords :
gallium; high-speed optical techniques; hysteresis; nonlinear optics; optical glass; reflectivity; continuous wave optical stimulation; controlling light with light; fast recovery time; fully reversible; hysteresis; liquefying gallium nonlinearity; melting-cooling cycle; metallic gallium-glass interface; milliwatt power levels; milliwatt switching powers; nonresonant nonlinear mechanism; noticeable hysteresis; reflectivity; spectral regions; submicrosecond response times; truly practical all-optical switching; Diffraction; III-V semiconductor materials; Lighting control; Optical arrays; Optical superlattices; Optical waveguides; Propagation constant; Semiconductor waveguides; Voltage; Waveguide transitions;
Conference_Titel :
Quantum Electronics Conference, 1998. IQEC 98. Technical Digest. Summaries of papers presented at the International
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA, USA
Print_ISBN :
1-55752-541-2
DOI :
10.1109/IQEC.1998.680062
