Theory of the Nonlinear Optical Response of Active Multilayer Interference Filters

Intrinsic refractive optical bistability has now been observed in many semiconductors [1]. Switching power levels in such systems are typically in the range 1-100 milliwatts. Having in mind arrays of bistable elements for two dimensional optical information processing it will be necessary to achieve 1-100 microwatt switching power levels in order to realise the parallelism that optics offers at moderate total power levels.