Kerr and free-carrier ultrafast all-optical switching of GaAs/AlAs nanostructures near the three-photon edge of GaAs

摘要

We performed non-degenerate pump-probe experiments on a GaAs/AlAs photonicstructure. We switched the photonic properties using the optical Kerr effectand free carriers excited by three photon absorption. From these measurementswe extracted the non-degenerate Kerr coefficients over a broad wavelength rangeand we extracted the three photon absorption coefficient for GaAs at threewavelengths in the near infrared. We show that the optical Kerr effect is largeenough to switch a cavity resonance with a high \emph{Q} ($Q>1000$) photoniccavity.