Optical bistability by two laser beams in photorefractive crystals

For a nonlinear medium, a given incident laser beam may produce different transmitted light waves. This phenomenon (the so-called optical bistability) corresponds to multiple solutions of the boundary value problems of the nonlinear Helmholtz equation. Optical bistability can be useful in the design of optical switches. Devices that display this behavior could potentially play a major role in the development of optical communication systems and computing. In this article we present experimental results concerning the optical bistability in photorefractive BaTiO3:Fe crystal. Two laser beams were used to interact with the photorefractive crystal which resulted in the bistability of the intensity of transmitted wave. This was achieved without the application of any optical resonator. High contrast optical bistability is found experimentally in the pump-ratio dependence of the output intensity.