DEMONSTRATION OF ULTRAFAST, ALL-OPTICAL, LOW CONTROL ENERGY, SINGLE-WAVELENGTH, POLARIZATION-INDEPENDENT, CASCADABLE, AND INTEGRATABLE SWITCH

A new type of ultrafast all optical switch based on a Mach-Zehnder int erferometer is demonstrated with a 10 ps switching window which requir es only 0.65 pJ of control pulse energy. The optical nonlinearity whic h is utilized is associated with the gain compression of semiconductor optical amplifiers, and the switching turnoff transition does not dep end on the slow amplifier recovery time. Both data and control pulses are at the same wavelength of 1.313 mu m; and are not polarized orthog onal to each other. The device configuration and the semiconductor amp lifiers allow for small scale integration and data output cascadabilit y. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics.