Excitable logic for photonic information processing

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Electronic systems are ubiquitously employed in highly-demanding data processing and computing applications; however, they are prone to numerous drawbacks related to security. While a scalable, general purpose digital optical computing processor has remained elusive, the demonstration of reconfigurable all-optical gates for specialized tasks such as in secure computing is attractive because optical devices neither generate an electromagnetic (EM) signature which can be observed from a distance nor can be jammed by external EM interference, hence posing less risk than their electronic counterparts. There is a pressing need to investigate optical logic using a single device, which is robust enough to operate in a rugged military environment while having the potential to increase computing speed. The objective of this project is to design, build and demonstrate a reconfigurable optical gate with a single device for ultrafast information processing. Specifically, the goal is to develop a reconfigurable AND/NOT logic device by engineering the dynamics of a graphene-based laser based on the principle of excitability (a non-linear dynamical mechanism underlying all-or-none responses to small perturbations). Excitability has been shown to enable thresholding and cascadability of photonic devices, while graphene has unique optical properties that are particularly useful in the context of processing, including a ultrafast response time, wideband frequency tunability, and a tunable modulation depth. Successful implementation of a reconfigurable optical logical gate with a single device, as envisioned here, would provide the fundamental technology to build larger scale networks that operate on principles of excitable logic, which could have potential applications in electronic warfare, sensing, physical layer security, military computing, and space applications.