Comparison of Sagnac and Mach–Zehnder ultrafast all-optical interferometric switches based on a semiconductor resonant optical nonlinearity

Abstract

We present a theoretical analysis of recently demonstrated ultrafast all-optical interferometric switching devices (based on Sagnac and Mach–Zehnder interferometers) that use a large optical nonlinearity in a resonant regime. These devices achieve ∼10-ps switching windows and do not require high-energy optical control pulses. We theoretically analyze and compare one Sagnac and two Mach–Zehnder switching configurations.

© 1996 Optical Society of America

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