Optical Bistability of 1-D Photonic Crystals Containing of Nonlinear Plasma

In this article, a novel nonlinear model is proposed to describe the permittivity of the plasma, and the nonlinear optical bistable phenomenon of the 1-D photonic crystals, which is composed of a nonlinear plasma defect layer, is theoretically investigated by the conventional transfer matrix method (TMM) under TM wave. It is figured out that the permittivity of nonlinear plasma exists in bistable state. Then, the tuning effects of the number of the photonic crystals’ (PCs) periodic layers, the incident frequency, the thicknesses of the nonlinear plasma layer, and the incident angle on the optical bistability (OB) have been emphatically studied. Additionally, the transmission and the reflectance under the influences of this bistable tuning are further proposed. The calculated results show that the adjustment of the OB can be achieved without changing the multi-layer material geometry. This multi-composite nonlinear plasma defect structure with the tunable bistable phenomenon can be applied to numerous valuable optical devices, such as novel optical power threshold devices, logic gates, and optical information memory.