Realization of zero-biased optical bistability in a symmetric self-electrooptic effect device array

Optical bistable device arrays have gained much interest for their potential application in optical parallel information processing. The symmetric self-electrooptic effect device (S-SEED) is one of the most promising bistable devices because of its low switching energy. In order to increase the optical bistability in a S-SEED, one needs to increase the reverse bias. This approach, however, inevitably entails an increase in switching energy and thermal ohmic heating. For fast switching and fabrication simplicity, it would be desirable to achieve optical bistability without external bias. In this paper, we report our experimental results on the zero-biased optical bistability (ZBOB) of a S-SEED array that we fabricated in a very simple lay-out and present some design considerations to maximize the bistability.