LOW-LATENCY SOLITON LOGIC GATES IN ERBIUM-DOPED FIBER AMPLIFIERS

We show that fiber logic gates based on soliton interactions can be sh ortened to less than a soliton period in length by incorporating erbiu m-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's) into the switches. For example, we d escribe an all-optical, cascadable logic gate with a fan-out of 2.7 an d energy contrast of 5.5 in a soliton-period-long, moderately birefrin gent EDFA. We compare two configurations: a distributed amplifier, in which the solitons interact while being amplified, and a discrete ampl ifier, in which the pulses are amplified before Although asymmetric wa lk-off and rapid amplification during interaction may play a role in t he distributed amplifier, the primary benefit of introducing EDFA's ap pears to be the resulting high pulse intensities.