High-speed optoelectronic gallium arsenide switch triggered by mode-locked laser pulses

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The performance of an optoelectronic semiconductor switch triggered by mode-locked laser pulses is investigated theoretically. The interaction of the laser light with the semiconductor is represented by a non-linear partial differential equation which is solved by computational means. The mode-locked lasers which are considered to trigger the switch are the alexandrite laser (0·765 μm) and the dye laser (0·61 μm). The semiconducting material considered in the interaction is semi-insulating gallium arsenide which is specially compensated to have intrinsic properties (particularly a very high initial resistivity). The results show that the switch can have a response time of the order of several picoseconds, an ‘off’ time of the order of a few nanoseconds and a repetition rate approaching 1 GHz.