Optical limiters transmit low-intensity light, while blocking laser radiation with excessively high intensity or fluence. A typical passive optical limiter absorbs most of the high level radiation, which can cause irreversible damage. In this communication we report the first experimental realization of a reflective optical limiter, which does not absorb the high-level laser radiation, but rather reflects it back to space. The design is based on a periodic layered structure composed of alternating SiO2 and Si3N4 layers with a single GaAs defect layer in the middle. At low intensities, the layered structure displays a strong resonant transmission via the localized defect mode. At high intensities, the two-photon absorption in the GaAs layer suppresses the localized mode along with the resonant transmission, the entire layered structure turns highly reflective within a broad frequency range covering the entire photonic band gap of the periodic layered structure. By contrast, a stand-alone GaAs layer would absorb most of the high-level radiation, thus acting as a basic absorptive optical limiter. The proposed design can only perform at shortwave IR, where GaAs displays negligible linear absorption and very strong nonlinear two-photon absorption. With judicious choice of optical materials, the same principle can be replicated for any other frequency range.Comment: We present the first experimental realization of reflective limiters in the optical domain (see theoretical proposals in arXiv:1412.6207, arXiv:1309.2595

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Optical limiters transmit low-intensity light, while blocking laser radiation with excessively high irradiance or fluence. A typical optical limiter involves a nonlinear material which is transparent at low light intensity and becomes opaque when the light intensity exceeds certain level. Most of the high-level radiation is absorbed by the nonlinear material causing irreversible damage. This fundamental problem could be solved if the state of the nonlinear material changed from transparent to highly reflective (not absorptive) when the intensity becomes too high. None of the known nonlinear optical materials display such a property. A solution can be provided by a nonlinear photonic structure. In this communication, we report the first experimental realization of a reflective optical limiter. The design is based on a planar microcavity composed of alternating SiO 2 and Si 3 N 4 layers with a single GaAs defect layer in the middle. At low intensity, the planar microcavity displays a strong resonant transmission via a cavity mode. As the intensity increases, two-photon absorption in GaAs kicks in, initially resulting in the microcavity enhanced light absorption. Further increase in light intensity, though, suppresses the cavity mode along with the resonant transmission; the entire planar microcavity turns highly reflective within a broad frequency range covering the entire photonic band gap. This seemingly counterintuitive behavior is a general feature of resonant transmission via a cavity mode with purely nonlinear absorption.