We numerically study the optical bistability (OBIS) in periodic multilayers of Ag/SiO_(2).The calculated dependence of the output on the input intensity shows two possible OBIS states at the test wavelength.One is due...We numerically study the optical bistability (OBIS) in periodic multilayers of Ag/SiO_(2).The calculated dependence of the output on the input intensity shows two possible OBIS states at the test wavelength.One is due to the field localization effects in silver layers with nonlinear refractive index modifying resonant tunneling of electromagnetic waves;the other,with about a three times lower threshold input intensity,is attributed to the intensity dependence change of the Ag/SiO_(2) composite's effective dielectric constant from metallic-like (negative) to dielectric-like (positive).With appropriate design engineering the Ag/SiO2 multilayers could find broad applications in all-optical information processes.展开更多
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No 61177091the National High-Technology Research and Development Program of China under Grant No 2011AA050520,NUST Research Funding(No 2011ZDJH23)the NUST‘Zijin Star’Project.
文摘We numerically study the optical bistability (OBIS) in periodic multilayers of Ag/SiO_(2).The calculated dependence of the output on the input intensity shows two possible OBIS states at the test wavelength.One is due to the field localization effects in silver layers with nonlinear refractive index modifying resonant tunneling of electromagnetic waves;the other,with about a three times lower threshold input intensity,is attributed to the intensity dependence change of the Ag/SiO_(2) composite's effective dielectric constant from metallic-like (negative) to dielectric-like (positive).With appropriate design engineering the Ag/SiO2 multilayers could find broad applications in all-optical information processes.