This book brings together two broad themes that have generated a great deal of interest and excitement in the scientific and technical community in the last 100 years or so: quantum tunnelling and nonlinear dynamical systems. It applies these themes to nanostructured solid state heterostructures operating at room temperature to gain insight into novel photonic devices, systems and applications.

This book covers the technology of switching or modulating light in semiconductor optical waveguides. Currently a key function for optical communications systems is the conversion of data from an electrical signal to an optical signal for transmission in very low loss optical fibres and the converse process of optical to electrical conversion the O/E/O data conversion. This conversion between electronic and photonic signals imposes an energy consumption overhead on optical communication systems. So many research workers have been attracted to ultrafast all-optical switching of data in different formats. As a way of introduction to all-optical switching in semiconductor waveguides the book covers the electro-optic effect, electroabsorption and electrorefraction; effects that can be used in semiconductor optical modulation devices. But the book focuses on all-optical switching using second and third order optical nonlinearities in AlGaAs optical waveguides. It covers a variety of device configurations including integrated nonlinear couplers and Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Further, it provides design software in suit of Mathematica notebooks that can be used to explore the device design.

This book covers the technology of switching or modulating light in semiconductor optical waveguides. Currently a key function for optical communications systems is the conversion of data from an electrical signal to an optical signal for transmission in very low loss optical fibres and the converse process of optical to electrical conversion the O/E/O data conversion. This conversion between electronic and photonic signals imposes an energy consumption overhead on optical communication systems. So many research workers have been attracted to ultrafast all-optical switching of data in different formats. As a way of introduction to all-optical switching in semiconductor waveguides the book covers the electro-optic effect, electroabsorption and electrorefraction; effects that can be used in semiconductor optical modulation devices. But the book focuses on all-optical switching using second and third order optical nonlinearities in AlGaAs optical waveguides. It covers a variety of device configurations including integrated nonlinear couplers and Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Further, it provides design software in suit of Mathematica notebooks that can be used to explore the device design.

This book brings together two broad themes that have generated a great deal of interest and excitement in the scientific and technical community in the last 100 years or so: quantum tunnelling and nonlinear dynamical systems. It applies these themes to nanostructured solid state heterostructures operating at room temperature to gain insight into novel photonic devices, systems and applications.