Integrated photonic inverter with gain

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) require inverting gates with gain greater than one to enable logic functionality with fanout and cascade. Optically modulated semiconductor laser technology is speed-limited by the photon cavity lifetime and, therefore, can provide high speed, integrable, digital logic gates. If semiconductor lasers can be configured as photonic inverters with gain exceeding one, then photonic clocks, oscillators, and logic gates would be possible at high data rates. This letter reports the demonstration of a semiconductor laser photonic inverter with an integrated dielectric input waveguide and gain greater than one.