Switching behavior of a nonlinear Mach-Zehnder interferometer: Saturating nonlinearity

This paper uses the Beam Propagation Method to investigate numerically the switching behavior of a Nonlinear Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (NMZI). A saturating-type nonlinearity has been considered for the present investigations. It is shown that the input versus output characteristics change drastically when a Kerr type nonlinear medium is replaced by a saturating type nonlinear medium. In contrast to an NMZI with Kerr nonlinearity, where only quantitative behavior changes with NMZI length, quantitative as well as qualitative behaviors change in the case of a saturating nonlinearity. We propose an all-optical stabilizer and MZI with stable “ON” and “OFF” states on the basis of our investigation.