Optical bistable switching in semiconductor heterostructure containing a quantum dot layer: The effect of phonons

A theoretical model is proposed which can predict the role of different interactions for optical bistability in a semiconductor heterostructure containing a quantum dot layer. We made a theoretical investigation about this structure for the effect of different interactions using a semi-analytic treatment. This theoretical investigation is different from the others in the sense that we have considered the effect of different phonon modes or interactions in addition to the other interactions. This model predicts that phonon modes play a very important role in optical bistability for the proposed structure. It is found that, increase in number of carriers due to the different phonon modes, results in the decrease of optical bistability. Whereas the increase of frequency of the modes has no effect on this non-linear phenomenon for less frequency. But as the frequency is increased to a high value, then area of the bistable loop decreases.