MODELING OF GaAs BISTABLE DEVICES.

Numerical simulations are presented for room temperature GaAs optical bistability in both short etalons and waveguide devices. The computations are done using the equation for the transmission of a Fabry-Perot resonator filled with semiconductor material exhibiting nonlinear dispersion and absorption. The intensity of the transmitted light is coupled to the electron-hole pair density in the material by both the absorption coefficient and the nonlinear part of the refractive index. The density is determined by the absorbed light intensity inside the resonator and by the recombination losses. A microscopic plasma theory, whose results are in close agreement with recent experimental findings, is used to describe the optical properties of room temperature GaAs consistently.