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Annual Report

Program to develop an optical transistor and switch

T. Henningsen, Max Garbuny, Richard H. Hopkins

Published Oct 1, 1985• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Work during this period evaluated analytically the concept of multistage optical transistors based on two spectroscopically complementary materials. It is shown that very high total gains can be obtained with either of two alternatives, viz., (1) a chain of discrete complementary transistor units, or (2) a complementary transistor continuum (a concept which has no electronic analog). Whereas the total gain grows exponentially with the number of stages, the required constant photon fluxes grow only linearly with that number. High signal-to-noise ratios can be obtained without the need of cooling. However, the spectroscopic matching conditions of the two complementary materials are stringent. Under the guidance of the theoretical work, a search for suitably matching materials is now underway. (Author)

Related papers

Program to Development an Optical Transistor and Switch.

T. Henningsen, Max Garbuny, Richard H. Hopkins

Abstract : Previous work has proposed and analyzed the concept of two light beams interacting with a suitable medium to the effect that one beam turns the second beam on or off (an optical switch), or that the modulation in the first beam in amplified in the second (an optical transistor). Switching action was also demonstrated experimentally in uranyl for switching rates up to several kHz. In the present work, a more general survey and analysis was undertaken to identify classes and species of materials for which a particularly effective switching or transistor action can be predicted theoretically. As a class, dense materials, including liquid dyes, have broad absorption band spectra, resulting in low-performance capabilities such as a low transistor gain. In contrast, media in which atomic transitions are free, or shielded, from the fields of other atoms have, as switches and transistors, relatively high speeds of response and low demands on radiation power and mass of interacting materials. As special examples of this class, the performance characteristics of lithium and sodium wer calculated and the implications of the results discussed with respect to further action. Keywords include: Optical, Switch, Transistors, Absorption, Relaxation, Rate, Cross sections, Lithium, Sodium, Transition, Line and Bands.

NASA STI/Recon Technical Report N•Mar 15, 1985•0 citations

Photonic band gap materials: towards an all-optical transistor

Marian Florescu A

The transmission of information as optical signals encoded on light waves traveling through optical fibers and optical networks is increasingly moving to shorter and shorter distance scales. In the near future, optical networking is poised to supersede conventional transmission over electric wires and electronic networks for computer-to-computer communications, chip-to-chip communications, and even on-chip communications. The ever-increasing demand for faster and more reliable devices to process the optical signals offers new opportunities in developing all-optical signal processing systems (systems in which one optical signal controls another, thereby adding "intelligence" to the optical networks). All-optical switches, two-state and many-state all-optical memories, all-optical limiters, all-optical discriminators and all-optical transistors are only a few of the many devices proposed during the last two decades. The "all-optical" label is commonly used to distinguish the devices that do not involve dissipative electronic transport and require essentially no electrical communication of information. The all-optical transistor action was first observed in the context of optical bistability [1] and consists in a strong differential gain regime, in which, for small variations in the input intensity, the output intensity has a very strong variation. This analog operation is for all-optical input what transistor action is for electrical inputs.

Opto-Canada: SPIE Regional Meeting on Optoelectronics, Photonics, and Imaging•Aug 29, 2017•0 citations

Optical transistor

Kanti Jain, George W. Pratt

A device is proposed which is the optical analog of the transistor wherein a weak incoming optical signal directly controls a strong outgoing optical signal. The basic principle utilized in the proposed device is the strong dependence of second harmonic generation on the phase-matching condition. A weak incoming signal can perturb the indices of refraction in a birefringent material so that the second harmonic power derived from a pump beam is significantly affected. Large incremental power gain is shown to be possible. Tellurium is considered as an example.

Applied Physics Letters•Jun 15, 1976•41 citations

Photonic bandgap materials: towards an all-optical micro-transistor

Sajeev John, Marian Florescu A

We describe all-optical transistor action in photonic bandgap (PBG) materials doped with active atoms and analyse the advantages of this system over other all-optical transistor proposals. In the presence of a PBG material, a coherent laser beam with the frequency slightly detuned from the resonant atomic transition frequency can drive a collection of two-level atoms to an almost totally inverted state, a phenomenon strictly forbidden in ordinary vacuum. By varying the laser field intensity in the neighbourhood of a threshold value, it is possible to drive the atomic system through a transition from states in which the atoms populate preferentially the ground level to almost totally inverted states. In this process, the atomic system switches from a passive medium (highly absorptive) to a active medium (highly amplifying). The large differential gain exhibited by the atomic medium is very robust with respect to nonradiative relaxation and dephasing mechanisms. The switching action in a PBG material is not associated with operation near a narrow cavity resonance with conventional trade-off between switching time and switching threshold intensity. Rather it is associated with an abrupt discontinuity in the engineered broad-band electromagnetic density of states of the PBG material. We demonstrate all-optical transistor action in PBG materials by analysing the absorption spectrum of a second probe laser beam and we show that the probe beam experiences a substantial differential gain by slight intensity modulations in the control laser field. Under certain conditions, the fluctuations in the number of totally inverted atoms that contribute to the amplification process are strongly diminished (the statistics of the excited atoms becomes sub-Poissonian), which, in turn, determines a very low-noise regime of amplification.

Journal of Optics A Pure and Applied Optics•Oct 26, 2001•122 citations

Switching of the radiation frequency in a medium with a quadratic nonlinearity and an optical transistor based on this effect

A. A. Maǐer, K. Yu. Sitarskii

It is shown that abrupt transfer of radiation power is possible from one frequency to another at the output of a medium with a quadratic nonlinearity when its input is subjected to a small signal at the doubled frequency and the intensity of the signal is altered slightly under phase-matched interaction conditions and also in the case of deviation from such conditions. It is shown that an optical transistor can be constructed on the basis of this effect and that a giant gain can be achieved for a weak alternating signal.

Soviet Journal of Quantum Electronics•Nov 30, 1987•1 citation

All-Optical Transistor Action in Photonic Band Gap Materials

Marian Florescu A, Sajeev John

We describe all-optical transistor action in photonic band gap materials doped with active atoms. In the presence of a photonic band gap (PBG) material, a coherent laser beam with the frequency slightly detuned from the resonant atomic transition frequency can drive a collection of two-level atoms to an almost totally inverted state, a phenomenon strictly forbidden in ordinary vacuum. By changing the laser field intensity in the neighborhood of a threshold value, it is possible to drive the atomic system through a transition from states in which the atoms populate preferentially the ground level to almost totally inverted states. In this process, the atomic system switches from a passive medium (highly absorptive) to a active medium (highly amplifying). The switching action in a PBG material is not associated with operating near a narrow cavity resonance with conventional trade-off between switching time and switching threshold intensity. Rather it is associated with an abrupt discontinuity in the engineered broad band electromagnetic density of states of the PBG material. We demonstrate all-optical transistor action in PBG materials by analyzing the absorption spectrum of a second probe laser beam and we show that the probe beam experience a substantial differential gain by slight intensity modulations in the control laser field.

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Feb 1, 2003•1 citation
Work during this period evaluated analytically the concept of multistage optical transistors based on two spectroscopically complementary materials. It is shown that very high total gains can be obtained with either of two alternatives, viz., (1) a chain of discrete complementary transistor units, or (2) a complementary transistor continuum (a concept which has no electronic analog). Whereas the total gain grows exponentially with the number of stages, the required constant photon fluxes grow only linearly with that number. High signal-to-noise ratios can be obtained without the need of cooling. However, the spectroscopic matching conditions of the two complementary materials are stringent. Under the guidance of the theoretical work, a search for suitably matching materials is now underway. (Author)
Abstract : Previous work has proposed and analyzed the concept of two light beams interacting with a suitable medium to the effect that one beam turns the second beam on or off (an optical switch), or that the modulation in the first beam in amplified in the second (an optical transistor). Switching action was also demonstrated experimentally in uranyl for switching rates up to several kHz. In the present work, a more general survey and analysis was undertaken to identify classes and species of materials for which a particularly effective switching or transistor action can be predicted theoretically. As a class, dense materials, including liquid dyes, have broad absorption band spectra, resulting in low-performance capabilities such as a low transistor gain. In contrast, media in which atomic transitions are free, or shielded, from the fields of other atoms have, as switches and transistors, relatively high speeds of response and low demands on radiation power and mass of interacting materials. As special examples of this class, the performance characteristics of lithium and sodium wer calculated and the implications of the results discussed with respect to further action. Keywords include: Optical, Switch, Transistors, Absorption, Relaxation, Rate, Cross sections, Lithium, Sodium, Transition, Line and Bands.
The transmission of information as optical signals encoded on light waves traveling through optical fibers and optical networks is increasingly moving to shorter and shorter distance scales. In the near future, optical networking is poised to supersede conventional transmission over electric wires and electronic networks for computer-to-computer communications, chip-to-chip communications, and even on-chip communications. The ever-increasing demand for faster and more reliable devices to process the optical signals offers new opportunities in developing all-optical signal processing systems (systems in which one optical signal controls another, thereby adding "intelligence" to the optical networks). All-optical switches, two-state and many-state all-optical memories, all-optical limiters, all-optical discriminators and all-optical transistors are only a few of the many devices proposed during the last two decades. The "all-optical" label is commonly used to distinguish the devices that do not involve dissipative electronic transport and require essentially no electrical communication of information. The all-optical transistor action was first observed in the context of optical bistability [1] and consists in a strong differential gain regime, in which, for small variations in the input intensity, the output intensity has a very strong variation. This analog operation is for all-optical input what transistor action is for electrical inputs.
A device is proposed which is the optical analog of the transistor wherein a weak incoming optical signal directly controls a strong outgoing optical signal. The basic principle utilized in the proposed device is the strong dependence of second harmonic generation on the phase-matching condition. A weak incoming signal can perturb the indices of refraction in a birefringent material so that the second harmonic power derived from a pump beam is significantly affected. Large incremental power gain is shown to be possible. Tellurium is considered as an example.
We describe all-optical transistor action in photonic bandgap (PBG) materials doped with active atoms and analyse the advantages of this system over other all-optical transistor proposals. In the presence of a PBG material, a coherent laser beam with the frequency slightly detuned from the resonant atomic transition frequency can drive a collection of two-level atoms to an almost totally inverted state, a phenomenon strictly forbidden in ordinary vacuum. By varying the laser field intensity in the neighbourhood of a threshold value, it is possible to drive the atomic system through a transition from states in which the atoms populate preferentially the ground level to almost totally inverted states. In this process, the atomic system switches from a passive medium (highly absorptive) to a active medium (highly amplifying). The large differential gain exhibited by the atomic medium is very robust with respect to nonradiative relaxation and dephasing mechanisms. The switching action in a PBG material is not associated with operation near a narrow cavity resonance with conventional trade-off between switching time and switching threshold intensity. Rather it is associated with an abrupt discontinuity in the engineered broad-band electromagnetic density of states of the PBG material. We demonstrate all-optical transistor action in PBG materials by analysing the absorption spectrum of a second probe laser beam and we show that the probe beam experiences a substantial differential gain by slight intensity modulations in the control laser field. Under certain conditions, the fluctuations in the number of totally inverted atoms that contribute to the amplification process are strongly diminished (the statistics of the excited atoms becomes sub-Poissonian), which, in turn, determines a very low-noise regime of amplification.
It is shown that abrupt transfer of radiation power is possible from one frequency to another at the output of a medium with a quadratic nonlinearity when its input is subjected to a small signal at the doubled frequency and the intensity of the signal is altered slightly under phase-matched interaction conditions and also in the case of deviation from such conditions. It is shown that an optical transistor can be constructed on the basis of this effect and that a giant gain can be achieved for a weak alternating signal.
We describe all-optical transistor action in photonic band gap materials doped with active atoms. In the presence of a photonic band gap (PBG) material, a coherent laser beam with the frequency slightly detuned from the resonant atomic transition frequency can drive a collection of two-level atoms to an almost totally inverted state, a phenomenon strictly forbidden in ordinary vacuum. By changing the laser field intensity in the neighborhood of a threshold value, it is possible to drive the atomic system through a transition from states in which the atoms populate preferentially the ground level to almost totally inverted states. In this process, the atomic system switches from a passive medium (highly absorptive) to a active medium (highly amplifying). The switching action in a PBG material is not associated with operating near a narrow cavity resonance with conventional trade-off between switching time and switching threshold intensity. Rather it is associated with an abrupt discontinuity in the engineered broad band electromagnetic density of states of the PBG material. We demonstrate all-optical transistor action in PBG materials by analyzing the absorption spectrum of a second probe laser beam and we show that the probe beam experience a substantial differential gain by slight intensity modulations in the control laser field.