Abstract

Buffering of optical signals is desirable to avoid congestion of information traffic and realize efficient optical interconnects [1]. All-optical buffer memories have been proposed based on slow-light delay lines [2], or using the Kerr nonlinearity on a standard silica optical fiber [3], providing functionalities such as all-optical storage and reshaping. However, for realistic applications an optical buffer has to be compact for on-chip integration, which rules out most existing schemes, as they are not easily scalable to a millimeter size footprint and the writing process is often complex and costly. Novel configurations that combine the robustness of semiconductor nano-optoelectronic devices with the wide bandwidth of photonic sources offer significant advantages because they can provide small size, high-speed and low cost alternatives to the currently proposed all-optical buffers.

© 2015 IEEE