Abstract

In recent years, considerable interest has arisen for the realization of bistable devices with low (milliwatt) holding power, and optical gates with low (picojoule) switching energies. One of the most promising ways of obtaining such characteristics is to combine the use of excitonic or band gap resonnant semiconductor optical nonlinearities, with the implementation of small-size devices to achieve electronic and optical confinement (1). Nonlinear Fabry-Perot étalons with integrated mirrors are quite interesting in this respect because their inherent simplicity facilitates their miniaturization , as recently demonstrated (2).

© 1988 Optical Society of America