BINARY LOGIC-BASED PURELY ON FRESNEL DIFFRACTION

Binary logic operations on two-dimensional data arrays are achieved by use of the self-imaging properties of Fresnel diffraction. The fields diffracted by periodic objects can be considered as the superimpositi on of weighted and shifted replicas of original objects. We show that a particular spatial organization of the input data can result in logi cal operations being performed on these data in the considered diffrac tion planes. Among various advantages, this approach is shown to allow the implementation of dual-track, nondissipative logical operators. I mage algebra is presented as an experimental illustration of this prin ciple.