Controllable optical bistability via tunneling induced transparency in quantum dot molecules

We investigated the optical bistability of a quantum dot molecule under coherent excitation and considering the spontaneous exciton decay and pure dephasing as two decoherence channels. Because of the efficient destructive quantum interference established by the tunneling coupling, it is found that the appearance and disappearance of OB can easily be controlled by adjusting the position of the tunneling induced transparency window. Our scheme opens the possibility to control OB with electric gates.