Abstract

We have recently demonstrated that the reflectivity of a metallic gallium-glass interface shows a strong change and a noticeable hysteresis in the melting-cooling cycle and that such hysteresis can be considerably modified by continuous-wave optical stimulation at intensities of a few kW/cm².¹ Here we demonstrate that the nonresonant nonlinear mechanism is fully reversible with a fast recovery time. This nonlinearity has been used to achieve a truly practical all-optical switch with milliwatt switching powers, submicrosecond response times, which could be used from visible to IR spectral regions.

© 1998 Optical Society of America