40 Gb/s reconfigurable optical logic gates based on FWM in silicon waveguide.

Jie Hou,Xinliang Zhang,Liao Chen,Wenchan Dong

doi:10.1364/oe.24.002701

Abstract

Here we experimentally demonstrate reconfigurable logic gates via four-wave-mixing (FWM) in silicon waveguide with an operating speed of up to 40 Gb/s. After demodulated by a 40-GHz delay interferometer (DI), four non-return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (NRZ-DPSK) signals with carefully selected wavelengths are launched into the waveguide at the same time. Thanks to the effective FWM in silicon nano-waveguide, a full set of the two-input logic minterms can be generated simultaneously, and arbitrary combinational logic functions are able to be realized by properly combining these minterms.

Highlights

As the demand for higher performance computing will never ending, larger capacity signal transmission and higher speed signal processing become more and more important
Lots of elementary logic functions have been performed based on semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) [6,7,8,9], periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) [10, 11], highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) [12,13,14] and other nonlinear devices
Reconfigurable optical logic gates are especially important for their flexibility, in analogy with the programmable logic arrays (PLAs) which are of great use in the electrical signal processing system

Summary

Introduction

As the demand for higher performance computing will never ending, larger capacity signal transmission and higher speed signal processing become more and more important. Lots of elementary logic functions have been performed based on semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) [6,7,8,9], periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) [10, 11], highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) [12,13,14] and other nonlinear devices Among these schemes, reconfigurable optical logic gates are especially important for their flexibility, in analogy with the programmable logic arrays (PLAs) which are of great use in the electrical signal processing system. We further optimize our prior method and demodulate the DPSK signals into OOK signals with different wavelengths, which helps us realize all the minterms simultaneously by only one DI and one silicon waveguide.

Experiment results and discussions

Conclusion