Numerical simulation of optical bi-stability in antiferromagnetic sandwich structure

Abstract The magnetically optical bi-stability, a third-order nonlinear response, is investigated on an antiferromagnetic (AF) sandwich structure, where an AF film is sandwiched between two dielectric films. The configuration with the AF anisotropy axis and external static magnetic field both in the interfaces and normal to the incident plane is used. The incident wave is taken as a TE wave with its electric component transverse to the incident plane. We find that bistable switches can appear only in a finite frequency range and an incident angle range for a given regime of incident power, which means that there are the critical incident angle and frequency. The power threshold value for the bi-stability increases with the incident angle. In addition, the bi-stability also easily is modulated by the external magnetic field.