OPTICAL DEVICE HAVING NONMONOTONIC TRANSFER FUNCTION AND APPLICATIONS USING SAME

摘要

An entirely passive all-optical device, referred to as an optical hard limiter, consists of alternating layers of materials having oppositely signe d Kerr coefficients and substantially different linear indices of refraction, wherein the higher linear index material has the negative Kerr coefficient a nd the lower linear index material has the positive Kerr coefficient. The optic al device has two distinct transmittance curves. Various optical devices and systems can be built from such optical hard limiters.