Bistability and Optical Switching in Semiconductor Ring Lasers

Author

Pérez, Toni ; Scirè, Alessandro ; Mirasso, Claudio R. ; Colet, Pere

Author_Institution

Consejo Super. de Investigaciones Cientificas-Univ. de les Illes Balears, Palma

fYear

2007

fDate

17-22 June 2007

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

The switching properties of a semiconductor ring laser operating in the bistable regime under coherent optical pulse injection is investigated. Theoretical analysis of the two-mode ring laser is based on a set of dimensionless semiclassical Lamb equations for the two complex amplitudes of the counterpropagating fields. Observations show that the fast switching dynamics is due to an energy redistribution process between the two counterpropagating modes, that does not involve the carrier density variable.

Keywords

laser modes; optical bistability; optical pulse generation; ring lasers; semiconductor lasers; carrier density variable; coherent optical pulse injection; counterpropagating fields; energy redistribution; fast switching dynamics; optical bistability; optical switching; semiclassical Lamb equations; semiconductor ring lasers; two-mode ring laser; Equations; Laser modes; Laser theory; Nonlinear optics; Optical bistability; Optical pulse shaping; Optical pulses; Optical saturation; Ring lasers; Semiconductor lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 2007 and the International Quantum Electronics Conference. CLEOE-IQEC 2007. European Conference on

Conference_Location

Munich

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-0931-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-0931-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE-IQEC.2007.4385979

Filename

4385979