Abstract

The study of dispersive Optical Bistability (OB) and nonlinear gain in Vertical-Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (VCSOAs) is important in order to determine the potential of these devices for use in optical switching and optical computing applications. The OB in a VCSOA arises from the shift of cavity resonance with incident light intensity as a result of nonlinear refraction associated with gain saturation [1]. In this work we report experimental observation of power and wavelength OB and nonlinear gain in a 1.550 nm-VCSOA biased just below threshold and operated in reflection. Two different shapes of power and wavelength OB and nonlinear gain, anticlockwise and clockwise, have been experimentally observed, both with high on-off contrast ratio.

© 2007 IEEE