Optical bistability, photonic logic, and optical computation

Abstract

This paper presents new results and reviews the latest state of research in all-optical nonlinear logic switches, amplifiers, and memories. Optical circuit elements that perform the logic functions of the electronic computer are described. Switching speed on a picosecond time scale, the availability of fast high bandwidth consistent communication, and the application of optical parallelism in free space optical wiring are some advantages of the optical computing elements.