Tunable bistability and asymmetric line shape in ring cavity-coupled Michelson interferometer

A novel configuration of ring cavity-coupled Michelson interferometer is proposed to create sharp asymmetric multipleresonance line shape, in which a ring cavity is side-coupled to one arm and a phase shifter is introduced into the other arm for static phase compensation. Such asymmetric line shape allows the tuning of the system between zero and complete transmission, with a phase offset much narrower than the full width of the cavity resonance itself. As tuning between resonance peak and notch of such asymmetric profile, optical transmission becomes much more sensitive to the round-trip phase shift of ring cavity than that in the case of symmetric Lorentzian line shape. By cooperating Kerr nonlinearity and cavity feedback, novel hysteresis loops and intrinsic bistability are achievable by adjusting incident power. The shapes of hysteresis curves associated with asymmetric resonance line shape are different from those arising from symmetric line shape. By adjusting the static phase compensation of phase shifter, tunable hysteresis loop and asymmetric multiple-resonance transmission can be easy performed. The simply constructed device is a good reference for sensitive optical switch, filter and sensor.