Multiperiod piezoelectric-barrier all-optical light modulator

We present preliminary new results on multiperiod piezoelectric-barrier all-optical modulators. It is shown first on single period structures that an incident beam of a few W/cm(2) is able to create a space-charge held of similar to 20 kV/cm in the structure, inducing a 10 meV shift in the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum. We discuss then a multiperiod structure showing similar optically-driven PL shifts. Even though the multiperiod structure was not optimized for transmission modulation experiments, we observed a 12% transmission variation at 760 nm induced by a 10 W/cm(2) optical beam. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.