Ultrafast all-optical asymmetric Fabry-Perot switch based on bulk beryllium-doped InGaAsP grown by He-plasma-assisted epitaxy

Summary form only given.Ultrafast all-optical switching devices are essential for signal processing in high-bit-rate communications systems. Semiconductor-based devices have the advantages of being compact, easy to integrate, and exhibiting negligible latency. Asymmetric Fabry-Perot (AFP) switching devices utilizing resonant nonlinearity in semiconductors require low switching energy and offer high contrast ratio. Two such devices have recently been demonstrated, one based on low-temperature-grown bulk GaAs, operating around 0.8 /spl mu/m, and another based on low-temperature-grown InGaAs-InAlAs strained multiple quantum wells (MQW), operating around 1.5 /spl mu/m, compatible with fiber communications systems. However, MQW-based devices must compensate for their polarization dependency and have narrower bandwidth than bulk-based devices. We report here ultrafast switching by an AFP device based on bulk semiconductor operating around 1.5 /spl mu/m.