Optical Bistability in Colloidal Crystals

TL;DR

This paper models the nonlinear optical response of colloidal crystals, revealing bistability phenomena caused by strong light-lattice coupling, with results aligning well with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a one-dimensional model capturing optical bistability in colloidal crystals due to electric gradient forces under intense illumination.

Findings

Bistable transmission occurs within the stopband of the structure.

Switching intensity decreases as incident frequency increases.

Model results agree with recent experimental data.

Abstract

We present a one dimensional model for the nonlinear response of a colloidal crystal to intense light illumination along a high symmetry direction. The strong coupling between light and the colloidal lattice, via the electric gradient force acting upon the particles, induces a novel large optical nonlinearity. We obtain bistable behavior when the incident frequency is inside the stopband of the periodic structure, with decreasing switching intensity as the frequency increases. The transmission characteristics and the magnitude of the switching threshold intensity are also in good agreement with a recent experiment.