Michael E Crenshaw

US Patent:

52687856, Dec 7, 1993

Filed:

Feb 8, 1993

Appl. No.:

8/014605

Inventors:

Michael E. Crenshaw - Madison AL
Michael Scalora - Huntsville AL
Charles M. Bowden - Huntsville AL

Assignee:

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army - Washington DC

International Classification:

G02F 1015

US Classification:

359244

Abstract:

Described here is an all-optical switch having two states, one that absorbs ncident coherent optical radiation and another that amplifies incident coherent optical radiation. The state of switch is changed in response to the passage of an ultra-short coherent optical pulse when the peak field strength of the pulse is in a wide region about the effective dipole moment per unit volume, a characteristic material parameter proportional to the density and the dipole transition moment of the selected active two-level systems which are uniformly distributed with sufficient density so that there is more than one two-level system per cubic transition wavelength causing dipole-dipole interactions to be non-negligible.