All-Optical Logic Devices

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Lightwave technology is playing a major and expanding role, especially in optical communications, based on the success of optical fibers, diode lasers, and efficient detectors. The research effort proposed here concentrates on the most recent area of lightwave technology, namely all- optical logic. Based upon an area called nonlinear optics one light beam is able to control another, sometimes much more rapidly than can be accomplished with electronics. Decision-making capability is thereby added to the transformation and beam-direction capabilities of traditional linear optics. The present effort is by one of the groups which has pioneered the use of optics to do logic operations. Such efforts it can be hoped will eventually result in optical processing units which will rival some of the electronic counterparts or processing units with functions uniquely suited to optics.