Engineering Research Equipment Grant: Integrated Semiconductor Waveguide/Etalon Optical Based Logic Networks

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Novel methods for integrating optical interconnect elements such as waveguides, etalons, and photorefractive media, are key elements to the development of new algorithms, architectures, and compact processors for optical computing and neural network applications. Proposed, for the first time, is the experimental implementation of new GaAs-based integrated optical logic networks that corporate orthogonally intersecting rib waveguides and selectively defined nonlinear aluminum gallium arsenide and indium gallium arsenide superlattice etalon regions. Continuous wave and pulsed tunable infrared dye laser techniques will be used to demonstrate data encoding and arithmetic logic in coupled waveguide/etalon arrays which transmit optical data in both a pipelined and parallel fashion, simultaneously. The operation of the network is based upon the local interaction of three optical beams, two of which propagate in the sample plane and overlap in a region of saturable absorption, while a third control beam is used to set the output optical logic state. It is shown that crossbar networks can be used as logic gates or passive intensity and polarization modulators, depending upon the wavelengths and intensities of the data streams within the optical waveguides. Possible techniques for nonlinearity enhancement and the integration of volume storage elements will also be explored.