Polarization-encoded optical logic operations in photorefractive media

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate optical logic operations using polarization encoding and wave mixing in photorefractive crystals. In our approach two orthogonal polarization states of light beams are used to represent respective logic values of 1 and 0. All 16 two-input logic operations can be easily achieved by use of the recording and readout of photoinduced volume gratings in photorefractive crystals. An optical full adder is also proposed and demonstrated.