NOVEL IMPLEMENTATION METHOD TO REALIZE ALL-OPTICAL LOGIC GATES

A novel implementation method based on the principle of optical interf erence to realize all-optical logic gates without the need of nonlinea r optical materials is proposed. A general design rule of implementing the logic gates is obtained from the dimensionless intensity distribu tion of inteference fringes formed by multiple equally spaced slits. V arious designs of logic gates such as NAND, XOR, and so on are present ed. The feasibility of implementing the logic gates and their exemplar y applications to edge detection are demonstrated in several proof-of- principle experiments. System issues are discussed. (C) 1998 Society o f Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(98)03803-3].