Realization of optical bistability and multistability in Landau-quantized graphene

The solution of input-output curves in an optical ring cavity containing Landau-quantized graphene is theoretically investigated taking the advantage of density-matrix method. It is found that under the action of strong magnetic and infrared laser fields, one can efficiently reduce the threshold of the onset of optical bistability (OB) at resonance condition. At non-resonance condition, we observed that graphene metamaterial can support the possibility to obtain optical multistability (OM), which is more practical in all-optical switching or coding elements. We present an analytical approach to elucidate our simulations. Due to very high infrared optical nonlinearity of graphene stemming from very unique and unusual properties of quantized Landau levels near the Dirac point, such controllability on OB and OM may provide new technological possibilities in solid state quantum information science. (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.