Abstract

Recent advances in guided wave optical device technology have made it possible to produce electrooptic modulators and switches which operate at high speeds with low electrical power dissipation. This paper explores the possibility of using guided wave components to perform logic operations. Integrated optical logic circuits (IOLCs) consisting of a number of modulators and switches interconnected by single mode waveguides could be fabricated on an electrooptic substrate such as lithium niobate. The primary advantage sought in previous optical logic schemes, that of short gate propagation delay, would also apply to IOLCs, while the power dissipation per gate could be orders of magnitude lower than for logic based on nonlinear optical effects. Gates for performing basic logic functions (AND, OR, NOT, etc.) are described and a configuration for a serial-parallel binary adder illustrates how the individual gates can be interconnected to perform digital computation.

© 1978 Optical Society of America