Optical tristability investigation in two coupled ring resonators

The microring resonators have potential applications for the photonic integrated circuits. The dynamical phenomena of the two coupled microrings require a simple and efficient numerical formalism for solution of the system. We employ an analytical formula to calculate the optical tristability inside the two coupled microrings that takes into account Kerr nonlinearity and the effect of loss. We also compare the analytical results with the results from 3D finite-difference time-domain simulation. In addition, we show it is possible to obtain configurations which can tune the tristable region. This could be useful for designing optical logic applications. (paper)