Optical Bistability in an Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter (AOTF) Operating with Short Optical Pulses

Karlo David Alves Sabóia, Alex Sander Barros Queiroz, Francisco Tiago Lima, Cícero Saraiva Sobrinho, Jose Wally Mendonça Menezes, Antonio Sergio Bezerra Sombra

Departamento de Física, Laboratório de Telecomunica??es e Ciência e Engenharia de Materiais LOCEM, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil.
Departamento de Teleinformática, Laboratório Especialista em Sistemas de Telecomunica??es e Ensino, LESTE, Instituto Federal do Ceará, IFCE, Campus Fortaleza, Fortaleza, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/jemaa.2012.43015                

Abstract

In this paper we report for the first time the presence of bistability in an acoustic-optic tunable filter (AOTF) operating with ultrashort (2 ps) optical light pulses. The results for the study of bistability has shown the dependence of the hysteresis curve with the product of the coupling constant (κ) by the length of the device (ξ_L) and the conversion power-coupling constant factor (G). The range of bistability varies significantly with both G and with κξ_L parameters. The variation of κξ_L directly increases the size of the range of bistability hysteresis while the increase in G causes the bistability to occur at low powers. The phenomenon of optical bistability (OB) is the object of increasing interest due to its possibilities for important device applications. A bistable device is a device with a capability to generate two different outputs for a given input and the physical requirements for this are an intensity-dependence refractive index and an optical feedback mechanism.

Keywords

Bistability; Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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