Scaling of the saturation energy in microcavity saturable absorber devices

Several all-optical switching devices based on quantum well microcavity structures have been studied in view of their possible use for all-optical regeneration of telecommunication signals. Experiments and modeling show that the saturation energy is inversely proportional to a scaling factor describing the enhancement of the intracavity intensity at the Fabry-Perot resonance. As a result the saturation energy is approximately proportional to the number of quantum wells in the device and can be kept small by a proper cavity design.