Impact of the incoherent pump fields on the optical bistability of a dielectric slab doped with semiconductor quantum wells

The behavior of the optical bistability (OB) and optical multi-stability (OM) is investigated in an optical system which consists of a dielectric slab doped with a three-level asymmetric semiconductor quantum well system. It is found that the optical bistability can be converted to optical multi-stability (or vice versa) by adjusting different physical parameters such as the strength of Fano interference and the rate of incoherent pump field. Moreover, we find that the OB converts to OM by increasing the slab thickness. This optical system may provide some new possibilities for test the switching process.