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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Experimental demonstration of all-optical flip flop memory based on wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Kimberly Kaltenecker, Yevhen Rutovytskyy, Fahad A. Althowibi, Eric Donkor

Published May 31, 2013• 0 citations

Abstract

We present an experimental demonstration of an all optical memory consisting of a single semiconductor optical amplifier as the active medium based on wave mixing. The circuit is a fiber ring consisting of a semiconductor amplifier, a bi-directional 2x2 fiber coupler, an isolator, a polarization controller, and a Faraday mirror. The output is observed on the spectrum analyzer, which consists of the peak wavelength of the SOA plus an additional signal generated through wave mixing, which is tunable within the band gap of the SOA. We shall demonstrate two modes of operation of the device, which will consist of a flip flop switch between three states, as well as a single data storage memory. The stable states consist of two modes, where the mode amplitude represents the state. Mode 1 corresponds to 1500 nanometers and mode 2 corresponds to 1530 nanometers. A contrast ratio between an “on” and “off” state is measured for each mode and the mode of operation is based on the polarization. We shall present the states for the circuit, the effect of drive current on the system, the effect of the SOA structure, wave mixing effects, and how to operate the device for both logic operation and data storage.

DOI: 10.1117/12.2018071

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