Polarization based control of optical hysteresis in coupled GaAs microdisks

S. N. Ghosh, B. B. Buckley, C. G.L. Ferri, X. Li, F. M. Mendoza, Y. K. Verma, N. Samarth, D. D. Awschalom, S. Ghosh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Optical microresonators crafted from semiconducting materials are powerful systems for both understanding and harnessing the interactions between light and matter. We report an all-optical method of controlling the hysteretic emission of evanescently coupled GaAs microdisk pairs. Under partial excitation, the coupled lasing emission demonstrates optical bistability caused by saturable absorption. We observe that the presence of hysteresis can be modulated by the polarization state of the incident excitation. This optical control is an important functionality which, if extended to a large array, could lead to the creation of optical flip-flop and gated logic devices with multinode capabilities.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number011106
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume97
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 5 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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