Configuring a reversible full adder using the Pockels electro-optic effect of a Ti:LiNbO3-based MZI

Energy consumption is one of the prime concerns in the computational process of large servers, which must be ultra-fast while minimizing heat generation. Beyond the Boltzmann limit, photons can play a vital role in reducing the heat energy and enabling the system to work swiftly. Also, logically reversible computation has the potential to save energy by avoiding bit erasures and associated heat, while dealing with static leakage and dynamic signal energy loss related to the switching mechanism. The optoelectronic approach for configuring a reversible logic has evolved as an emerging technology of computation, where an electro-optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer (EO-MZI)-based design is preferred due to its easy integrability with silicon chips. This paper explores a new approach for designing a reversible full adder (RFA) using EO-MZI carried out with the beam propagation method in the OptiBPM tool. Validation of the optical simulation of the RFA is done through mathematical power modelling performed in MATLAB. Furthermore, the performance is analysed in terms of insertion and excess loss, where titanium (Ti) thickness, electrode voltage and wavelength are varied from their optimal values at the system level.