Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T07:02:12.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Materials for Photonic Switching and Information Processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

A.M. Glass
Get access

Extract

In electronic processors, heat dissipation and interconnection delay are serious design and performance limiting factors. Why then consider photonic components where both the energy and size of the photon are large (˜1 eV and ˜1 μm, respectively) and the required nonlinear interactions between electric or magnetic fields and photons for switching or modulation are small? There are several answers to this question. First, the wide bandwidth of optical communications systems is taxing the current capabilities of electronic switching technologies. Even a slow optical switch can switch a very wide bandwidth optical signal from one fiber to another. External optical modulators will likely be required in ultrawide bandwidth communications because of basic limitations on direct modulation of lasers. Because of the weak electromagnetic interaction and low dispersion, optical interconnection of electronic circuits offers considerable advantages in high speed computer architectures. Some of these applications would appear to be relatively near term since they build on current capabilities of optical communication.

Longer term and more speculative are applications of photonics to computation and image processing — areas where electronics technology is already mature. Current research can be divided into two groups — ultrafast processing and parallel processing. The first group concentrates on processing with ultra-fast optical pulses. Optical pulses as short as 6 fs — orders of magnitude shorter than any electronic pulses — have been generated in the research laboratory. High processing rates are achievable by serial processing of high repetition rate ultrashort pulses. This approach requires ultrafast switches, which in turn requires materials with ultrafast nonlinear optical response time. Indeed, the shortest electrical signals are now measured by optical sampling techniques.

Type
Photonic Materials
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 13 , Issue 8 , August 1988 , pp. 16 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Fork, R.L., Brito-Cruz, C.H., Becker, P.C., and Shank, C.V., Opt. Lett. 12 (1987) p. 483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Valdmanis, J., Electron. Lett. 23 (1987) p. 1308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.Glass, A.M., “Optical Materials,” Science 235 (1987) p. 1003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
4.Bierlein, J.D., Ferretti, A., Brixner, L.H., and Hsu, W.Y., Appl. Phys. Lett. 50 (1987) p. 1216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Singer, K.D., Sohn, J.E., and Lalama, S.J., Appl. Phys. Lett. 49 (1986) p. 248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Miller, D.A.B., Chemla, D.S., Damen, T.C., Gossard, A.C., Wiegman, W., Wood, T.H., and Burrus, C.A., Phys. Rev. Lett. 53 (1984) p. 2173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Wood, T.H., Burrus, C.A., D.Miller, A.B., Chemla, D.S., Damen, T.C., Gossard, A.C., and Wiegman, W., IEEE J. Quantum. Electron. QE-21 (1985) p. 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Miller, D.A.B., Chemla, D.S., and Schmitt-Rink, S., Appl. Phys. Lett, (in press).Google Scholar
9.Wilson, B.A., Dawson, P., Tu, C.W., Miller, R.C., J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B4 (1986) p. 1037; B. A. Wilson, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. Aug. 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Meynadier, M-H., Sturge, M.D., Tamargo, M.C., Huang, D.M., and Chang, C.C., Phys. Rev. Lett. 60 (1988) p. 1338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.Greene, B.I., Orenstein, J., Millard, R.R., and Williams, L.R., Chem. Phys. Lett. 139 (1987) p. 381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.West, L.C., Computer, 20 (1987) p. 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13.Miller, D.A.B., Chemla, D.S., and Schmitt-Rink, S.Appl. Phys. Lett. 52 (1988) p. 2154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. See for instance Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering, edited by Chang, R.K. and Furtak, T.E. (Plenum Press, New York, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15.McCall, S.L. and Gibbs, H.M., in Optical Bistability, edited by Bowden, C.M., Ciftan, M., and Robl, H.R. (Plenum Press, New York, 1981).Google Scholar
16.Flytzanis, C., Hache, F., Ricard, D., Rousignoi, Ph., in Proceedings of the Winter School on Physics and Fabrication of Microstructures and Microdevices, edited by Kelly, M.J. and Weisbusch, C. (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1986) p. 332.Google Scholar
17.Steigerwald, M.L., Alivisatos, A.P., Gibson, J.M., Harris, T.D., Kortan, R., Muller, A.J., Thayer, A.M., Duncan, T.M., Douglass, D.C., and Brus, L.E., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 110 (1986) p. 3046.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Wang, Ying, Chem. Phys. Lett. 126 (1986) p. 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Friberg, S.R. and Smith, P.W., IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE23 (1987) p. 2089.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Jewell, J.L., Scherer, A., McCall, S.L., Gossard, A.C., and English, J.H., Appl. Phys. Lett. 51 (1987) p. 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Lines, M.E. and Glass, A.M., Principles and Applications of Ferroelectrics and Related Materials (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977).Google Scholar
22. See textbook on Photorefractive Materials and Their Applications I, edited by Gunter, P. and Huignard, J.P. (Springer-Verlag, New York 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23.Miller, D.A.B., Chemla, D.S., Damen, T.C., Wood, T.H., Burrus, C.A., Gossard, A.C., and Wiegman, W., IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE21 (1985) p. 1462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24.Kost, A., Garmire, E.M., Danner, A., and Dapkus, P.D., Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics, 1988 Conference Digest, p. 138, Talk TUR3.Google Scholar