All-Optical Toggle Flip-Flop Based on Monolithic Semiconductor Ring Laser

Author

Trita, A. ; Mezosi, G. ; Sorel, Marc ; Giuliani, Giovanni

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Elettron., Univ. of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

Volume

26

Issue

1

fYear

2014

fDate

Jan.1, 2014

Firstpage

96

Lastpage

99

Abstract

A novel monolithic all-optical flip-flop of the toggle type with two complementary outputs is demonstrated based on a semiconductor ring laser (SRL), where the intrinsic directional bistability of the SRL device is combined with the saturable absorption effect that takes place in the reverse-biased input waveguides. Toggle flip-flop (TFF) operation is experimentally demonstrated using optical trigger toggle pulses of 500 ps duration. The achieved bit-rate of 500 Mb/s is the highest reported so far for all-optical TFFs. The operational speed is limited by the carrier recovery time of the saturable absorbers; however, the proposed technology has potential for multi-gigabits per second operation.

Keywords

optical bistability; optical logic; optical saturable absorption; ring lasers; semiconductor lasers; bit rate 500 Mbit/s; carrier recovery time; directional bistability; monolithic all-optical flip-flop; monolithic semiconductor ring laser; reverse-biased input waveguides; saturable absorption effect; Flip-flops; Logic gates; Optical bistability; Optical feedback; Optical fibers; Optical pulses; Optical flip-flop; all-optical signal processing; optical computing; semiconductor laser; semiconductor ring laser;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2013.2289976

Filename

6661366