Abstract

As an optical counterpart to bistable electronic elements, such as schmidt-trigger, flip-flops and multivibrators, a bistable injection laser is projected to play an important role in the fast advancing field of opto-electronic signal processing. Lasers with inhomogeneous injection have been proposed more than a decade ago [1], [2] as highly compact bistable optical devices. Unfortunately inhomogenously pumped injection lasers showed to date no or only a small hysteresis [3], [4] and were in addition beset by pulsations in the optical output [5] for reasons not well understood.

© 1982 Optical Society of America