Abstract
The effect of the bleaching property of a saturable absorber and the optical loss in a corrugated waveguide on bistability is analyzed by using the coupled-mode theory. Hysteresis and nonlinear properties are given as a function of the quantities characterizing the saturable absorber (the absorption coefficient Γ0, and the length of saturable absorber l) and the propagation characteristics of the corrugated waveguide (the coupling coefficient k and the optical loss in waveguide Γ). It is clear, by selecting the optimum values of these parameters., that the saturable optical resonator has a bistable property which is useful as an optical gate, an optical amplifier, and an optical memory in integrated optical circuits.