Analysis of the operation of surface‐emitting‐type optical threshold device

Abstract

This paper proposes a surface‐emitting‐type optical threshold device and analyzes its characteristics. For a surface‐emitting laser resonator with a saturable absorber, its static characteristics and small signal analysis with a current or light injection are obtained from rate equations. As a result, the possibility of an optical threshold device which operates with a practical optical energy of approximately 30 kW/cm2 has been shown. Furthermore, it has been shown that the optical threshold varies by controlling an injection current, and that AND and OR logics are possible with one device. As a result of small signal analysis, the device is shown to have a bandwidth of approximately 1 GHz.