Optical Ring-Resonator Random-Access Memories

This paper examines the properties of optical resonator memory cells, in which a data bit is stored in a high- optical resonator. It is shown that resonator-based optical memories are ultimately limited by losses in the resonators, by the extinction ratio and chirp of the variable coupling medium that injects and extracts data into and out of the resonators, and by chirp on the input signal. Using a simple analytical model and accurate field-based simulations, we analyze the performance of a ring-resonator optical memory cell and compare this with the performance of slow light delay line buffer memories and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor embedded dynamic random-access memory.