Optical bistability in a single-bus InGaAs micro-ring resonator array

In this paper, we investigate the optical bistability induced by optical nonlinearity in a compact parallel array of micro-ring resonators with radius of 5 μm. Due to the nature of perfect light confinement in this structure, resonance and accumulation process in a ring resonator and optical nonlinear effects, are observable even at small optical power (a few milliwatts). Different optical applications such as all-optical switching, optical memory devices, logic gates and modulators are possible, due to optical bistability in a ring resonator. Using alternative semiconductor compounds, instead of silicon that have weak nonlinear optical properties, we improve the performance of ring-resonator based devices. Here we use a polymer cladding layer with negative thermo-optic coefficient. Using this structure we can eliminate the temperature created nonlinearity which is a very slow process. Therefore, the switching speed increases from a few MHz to several tens of GHz. By plotting the transfer function of the resonator, a hysteresis loop is observed in a few milliwatts. Although, using a ring resonator array the bandwidth reduces, however, the width of the hysteresis loop and resolution between both steady state increases.