Ultrafast all-optical switching: Photonic engineering of resonator structures with organic nonlinear Kerr materials

A laterally structured all-optical switch based on an optical cavity with high quality factor and an organic nonlinear Kerr material is investigated theoretically. Owing to the non-linearity in the cavity, the resonance shifts in frequency on increase of the pump power, leading to either transmission or blocking of the signal beam. Furthermore, we report ultrafast pump & probe measurements of hybrid 1-D photonic bandgap structures consisting of an inorganic microcavity with an organic Kerr material. By varying the pump beam wavelength across the cavity resonance, we are able to distinguish between the underlying nonlinear absorption and the dispersion necessary for all-optical switching. It turns out that in the spectral region between 780 and 880 nm the nonlinear absorption dominates the signal. © 2005 Old City Publishing, Inc.