MONOLITHIC OPTICAL SWITCHING TECHNOLOGY FOR A PROGRAMMABLE OPTICAL LOGIC GATE ARRAY

Monolithic optical switches based on the integration of GaAs/AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with heterojunction phototransistors and photothyristors have evolved from a family of simple switches and logic capabilities to more complex switch nodes with increased functionality that are capable of performing optical logic and routeing in a dynamically programmable manner. The operation of these switches in different routeing and logic configurations is experimentally demonstrated. This technology provides the basis for compact, programmable optical logic processing and interconnection architectures, including a dynamically reconfigurable optical logic gate array that can be programmed using stored instruction sets (control voltages) to perform different combinational optical logic functions.