Advances in All-Optical Circuits

A ll-optical signal processing attracts much attention because of its potential to overcome the bandwidth and speed bottlenecks of electronic circuits. Many all-optical signal processing techniques already show up in a wide range of applications, like ultrafast telecommunications, optical computing, microwave photonics and biophotonics. These techniques offer processing bandwidths up to several THz—significantly faster than their electronic counterparts. To build an all-optical signal-processing and computing platform, we need to replace electronic circuit components with photonic counterparts, and thereby emulate processes and structures in the electronic domain using photonic technologies. Recently, all-optical temporal differentiators and integrators, and real-time Fourier and Hilbert transformers have been tested in the lab using fiber and integrated optics platforms, with bandwidths two to four orders higher than those of electronic equivalents. We have recently demonstrated two kinds of all-optical temporal integrators. Each design is capable of calculating the time integral of an arbitrary optical temporal waveform and has the potential to reach processing speeds well beyond the capabilities of electronic New photonic temporal integrators could push past some of the processing-speed limitations of electronic approaches. OPTICAL ENGINEERING Ming Li, IS-CAS Photonic integrator based on an active Fabry-Perot cavity.