All-optical Switching of a Microcavity Repeated at Terahertz Rates
arXiv:1211.1865 · doi:10.1364/OL.38.000374
Abstract
We have performed ultrafast pump-probe experiments on a GaAs-AlAs microcavity with a resonance near 1300 nm in the "original" telecom band. We exploit the virtually instantaneous electronic Kerr effect to repeatedly and reproducibly switch a GaAs-AlAs planar microcavity. We achieve repetition times as fast as 300 fs, thereby breaking the THz modulation barrier. The rate of the switching in our experiments is only determined by optics and not by material related relaxation. Our results offer novel opportunities for fundamental studies of cavity-QED and optical information processing in sub-picosecond time scale.
4 pages, 3 figures
References in corpus (4)
- Observation of optical-fiber Kerr nonlinearity at the single-photon level
- Spatial homogeneity of optically switched semiconductor photonic crystals and of bulk semiconductors
- Dynamical ultrafast all-optical switching of planar GaAs/AlAs photonic microcavities
- Competition between electronic Kerr and free carrier effects in an ultimate-fast optically switched semiconductor microcavity
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- Optimal all-optical switching of a microcavity resonance in the telecom range using the electronic Kerr effect
- Fano lines in the reflection spectrum of directly coupled systems of waveguides and cavities: measurements, modeling and manipulation of the Fano asymmetry
- Ultra-large actively tunable photonic band gaps via plasmon-analog of index enhancement
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