Abstract

Recently, it was discovered that the dispersive nonlinearity of MQWs exhibits a strong saturation behavior,¹ posing a serious limitation in the design of optical bistable etalons. This saturation can be discussed in terms of the dependence of the nonlinear index δn_NL on the carrier density N and N’s dependence on the incident light intensity I (i.e., δn_NL(I) = δn_NL (I) = δn_NL {N(I)}). One possible mechanism, arising from the δn_NL(N) is the saturation of the excitonic and bandfilling contribution. As the limiting values thus obtained are incompatible with the measured values, the N(I) dependence is a more likely candidate.

© 1992 Optical Society of America