Picosecond optical switching in semiconductor lasers

An analysis developed by Shore and Rozzi (1982, 1983) is applied to devices that show that switching on picosecond time scales is possible for the class of oscillations described. A special feature of this work is that it draws attention to the relation between nonlinearities in semiconductor lasers and more generally occurring nonlinear phenomena. The concept of the oscillations under consideration is explained, and the assumptions underlying the analysis are specified. In applying the analysis, reference is made to the general concepts of Hopf bifurcation theory, and its application to the semiconductor laser is outlined. Attention is then given to implementation of the optical switching. The analysis is applied to stripe-geometry injection lasers in which mode guidance is determined through the competition between the influence of the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant of the laser material.