Excitonic Optical Nonlinearity and Optical Bistability in ZnSe–CdZnSe MQWs at Room Temperature
D.Z. Shen, J. Y. Zhang, X. W. Fan, Jiabao Sun, Baojun Yang, You Lü, S. M. Wang · Japanese Journal of Applied Physics · 1995
Excitonic optical bistability with picosecond switching time in ZnSe-CdZnSe multiple quantum wells (MQWs) optical bistable device is investigated at room temperature for the first time. The result indicates that the threshold and contrast ratio for the optical bistability in ZnSe-CdZnSe MQWs optical bistable device are about 210 kW/cm2 and 2 : 1, respectively. On the basis of the excitonic nonlinear theories, excitonic absorption and excitonic emission under different excitation intensities in the ZnSe-CdZnSe MQWs obtained here, we attribute the major nonlinear mechanism for the optical bistability in ZnSe-CdZnSe MQWs optical bistable device to the phase space filling of excitonic states and excitonic band broadening due to exciton-exciton interactions.