Spatial Soliton All-Optical Logic Gates

S. V. Serak, N. V. Tabiryan, M. Peccianti, and G. Assanto

IEEE Photon. Techn. Lett. 18 , 1287-1289 (2006)

Abstract:

We demonstrate some basic all-optical (electrically unbiased) logic gates in azobenzene liquid crystalline cells, exploiting their large nonlinearity for light localization and the trans-cis photoisomerization for all-optical external control. Spatial solitons were excited at microwatt power levels at 632.8 nm, whereas gating and switching were achieved with milliwatt beams at 409 nm.