High-speed, all-optical XOR gates using semiconductor optical amplifiers in ultrafast nonlinear interferometers

Abstract

We will review three recently-proposed high-speed, all-optical Exclusive OR (XOR) gates operating at 40 and 85 Gb/s, which were demonstrated using ultrafast nonlinear interferometers (UNIs) incorporating semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). The first 40-Gb/s XOR gate was obtained using a dual UNI configuration. The second is a 40-Gb/s XOR gate without additional probe beam required, where the only inputs launched into the setup were data A and B. The XOR logic of data A and B is the sum of two components \( \bar A \)B and A\( \bar B \), each of which was obtained from the output of UNI via cross-phase modulation (XPM) in SOAs. Furthermore, an 85-Gb/s XOR gate is, by far, the fastest XOR gate realized by SOAs, which was also demonstrated using a dual UNI structure. The operating speed of the XOR gate was enhanced by incorporating the recently proposed turbo-switch configuration. In addition, the SOA switching pulse energies of these XOR gates were lower than 100 fJ.