Cascading: Modelling a New Route to Large Optical Nonlinearities and All-Optical Devices

Abstract

One of the attractive possibilities offered by nonlinear optics is the application of an intensity dependent refractive index to various all-optical switching, data processing and logic operations. Despite the concentrated effort made in searching for materials with large nonlinearities and low linear and nonlinear losses, the powers required for integrated optical waveguide device operation are still of the order of watts.