A 7.5µm-diameter InP microdisk laser, integrated on an SOI waveguide is demonstrated as all-optical flip-flop working in continuous-wave regime with an electrical power consumption of several mW, and allowing switching in 60 ps with pulses of 1.8fJ.
Since there is an increasing demand for fast networks and switches, the electronic data processing imposes a severe bottleneck and all-optical processing techniques will be required in the future. All-optical flip-flops are one of the key components because they can act as temporary memory elements. Several designs have already been demonstrated but they are often relatively slow or complex to fabricate. We demonstrate experimentally fast flip-flop operation in a single DFB laser diode which is one of the standard elements in today's telecommunication industry. Injecting continuous wave light in the laser diode, a bistability is obtained due to the spatial hole burning effect. We can switch between the two states by using pulses with energies below 200 fJ resulting in flip-flop operation with switching times below 75 ps and repetition rates of up to 2 GHz.
Abstract-We introduce a new concept for an all-optical flip-flop based on a single distributed feedback laser. The injection of external light into the laser results in a nonuniform carrier distribution. We will show numerically that this nonlinear effect of the carriers gives rise to a bistability that can be exploited for fast flip-flop operation.Index Terms-All-optical flip-flops, distributed feedback (DFB) lasers, optical bistability.
We demonstrate symmetry breaking in ring-like networks composed of three and four coupled nonlinear cavities, such as photonic crystal resonators. With coupled mode theory we derive analytical conditions for the appearance of asymmetric states. The rich dynamical behaviour is further demonstrated by time-domain calculations, which show cyclical switching action that is useful for multi-stable all-optical flip-flops.
Abstract-A broadband optical 2R regenerator based on a single distributed feedback laser is demonstrated for nonreturn to zero signals at a bitrate of 10 Gb/s. A semi-analytical approach for the influence of hysteresis on the transfer function of a 2R regenerator is shown.
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