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U.S. Department of Energy
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Parallel ultrafast digital optical computations

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:6685973

New methods to implement optical digital computation elements and processors are studied in this thesis. Various ultrafast nonlinear optical effects, such as Kerr, phase conjugation, and second-harmonic-generation process are used for optical computation. The ultrafast Sagnac interferometric logic switches which have a better mechanical stability over other two-beam interferometric switching geometries are described. Using a variety of these switches, various binary and multiple-valued optical logic elements is detailed. As an alternative optical logic implementation technique, an optical-phase-conjugation pattern-logic method is proposed and demonstrated. The implementation of ultrafast optical interconnection devices, i.e., an optical sampler, an A/D converter, a dynamic crossbar, as well as various generalized perfect shuffles, is also described. Most of the proposed schemes uses a parallel processing geometry. For the optical numerical computation, various binary and non-binary computing structures are also investigated.

Research Organization:
New York Univ., NY (USA)
OSTI ID:
6685973
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English