CHAPTER 4 - HYBRID OPTICAL BISTABILITY EXPERIMENTS

Abstract

This chapter focuses on hybrid optical bistability. Hybrid bistable optical device is significant because it provides an ideal plane-wave purely dispersive and well-controlled device that could be used to compare theories and experiments. Any optical phenomenon that leads to an output signal, which is a nonlinear function of a parameter that can be made proportional to the output, will exhibit hybrid optical bistability. Elimination of the optical cavity removes the need for coherent light; any light source with suitable stability characteristics can be used. Hybrid bistable systems place few demands on the light source and optics; any sophistication is usually in the electronics or in the light-electronics interface device. Consequently, there have been many hybrid bistability experiments. They can be divided roughly into two types: (1) those that study some bistability phenomenon such as regenerative pulsations or critical slowing down and (2) those that extend the light-electronics interface systems. A hybrid bistable system is an exact analog of a plane-wave purely dispersive intrinsic bistable system; therefore, many hybrid experiments are very helpful in understanding the behavior of ideal intrinsic devices.