Observation of Optical Bistabilities in a Doped Polymer Thin Film Quasi-waveguide

Optical bistability was observed and studied in the output of reflected beam as well as in that of m-lines in a doped polymer thin film quasi-waveguide. The physical origin was demonstrated to be the existence of a mode spectrum and the high third order nonlinearity of the polymer film. It was also observed for the first time that the intensity variation of the reflected beam and the m-line in the hysteresis loops are complementary to each other.