Mutually Quenched Injection Lasers as Bistable Devices

The optical interaction of lasers attracts widespread interest for a number of reasons, a prominent one being the possibility that logic or memory systems using optically coupled elements may some day be realized. The quenching of one laser by the coherent light of another has been observed for GaAs injection lasers1and for neodymium glass lasers.2When the coherent output of one laser is passed through the active region of a second, the second laser is stimulated to emit in the same direction as the incident light. The power added to the amplified incident light is subtracted from the power in the normal lasing mode or modes of the second laser. We refer to this process as quenching and define a quenching ratio to be the power extracted from the quenched laser divided by the incident power, noting that for identical lasers the incident power will be equal to the power available for stimulated emission in the quenched laser. We will derive some simple expressions for the quenching ratio in certain ideal situations. Then we will compare these expressions with the results of some quenching experiments reported by one of the authors.