title: Optical bistability on a silicon chip.
abstract: We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, optical bistability on a highly integrated silicon device, using a 5-microm-radius ring resonator. The strong light-confinement nature of the resonator induces nonlinear optical response with low pump power. We show that the optical bistability allows all-optical functionalities, such as switching and memory with microsecond time response and a modulation depth of 10 dB, driven by pump power as low as 45 microW. Silicon optical bistability relies on a fast thermal nonlinear optical effect presenting a 500-kHz modulation bandwidth.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, 411 Phillips Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
authors.forename: Vilson R
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Almeida
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lipson