Experimental demonstration of all-optical SOA-assisted Sagnac recirculating shift register with an inverter and SOA feedback

Abstract

Summary We report the operation of an all-optical recirculating shift register with an inverter at 10 Gb/s using a Sagnac interferometer with a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as the nonlinear switching element and a second SOA to provide feedback. Binary pulse patterns were stored in the memory circuit recirculating stably for periods of several hours. The demonstration of this simple optical loop memory proves also the cascadability of the SOA-assisted Sagnac switch.