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Optical Bistability in a Tunable Gourd-Shaped Silicon Ring Resonator
Yishu Chen1, Jijun Feng1, Jian Chen1
1Engineering Research Center of Optical Instrument and System, Ministry of Education and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Modern Optical System, School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 Jungong Rd, Shanghai 200093, China.
Abstract:
In this study, a tunable gourd-shaped ring resonator is demonstrated to generate optical bistability. The system consists of two sub-rings for a gourd shape configuration with a U-shaped wave guiding pathway. The transfer matrix method and FDTD simulation are used to acquire the spectral characteristics of the system. For the fabricated device, the spectra profile and extinction ratio can be effectively tuned by the microheater above the U-shaped waveguide, which matches with the theoretical results. Due to the gourd structure of the resonator, the light waves in two rings can be cross-coupled with each other, and the optical bistability could come out effectively with the change in the input optical power around 6 mW. The presented optical bistability devices have great application potential in optical information processing such as optical storage, switch and logic operation.

