All-optical bistable switching in curved microfiber-coupled photonic crystal resonators

Abstract

The authors report low-power optical bistability under continuous wave pumping conditions in five-cell photonic crystal linear resonators containing InGaAsP quantum wells, by employing the fiber-coupling technique. The threshold bistable power is measured to be 35 mu W at the normalized detuning of -1.724. Owing to the high band-edge nonlinearities of quantum wells and the efficient fiber coupling, minimal instability is observed. In addition, all-optical switching is demonstrated with switching energy less than 75.4 fJ.(c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.