Incoherent-to-coherent conversion by use of the photorefractive fanning effect

Optical Computing: Status and Perspectives

For many years, optics has been employed in computing, although the major focus has been and remains to be on connecting parts of computers, for communications, or more fundamentally in systems that have some optical function or element (optical pattern recognition, etc.). Optical digital computers are still evolving; however, a variety of components that can eventually lead to true optical computers, such as optical logic gates, optical switches, neural networks, and spatial light modulators have previously been developed and are discussed in this paper. High-performance off-the-shelf computers can accurately simulate and construct more complicated photonic devices and systems. These advancements have developed under unusual circumstances: photonics is an emerging tool for the next generation of computing hardware, while recent advances in digital computers have empowered the design, modeling, and creation of a new class of photonic devices and systems with unparalleled challenges. Thus, the review of the status and perspectives shows that optical technology offers incredible developments in computational efficiency; however, only separately implemented optical operations are known so far, and the launch of the world's first commercial optical processing system was only recently announced. Most likely, the optical computer has not been put into mass production because there are still no good solutions for optical transistors, optical memory, and much more that acceptance to break the huge inertia of many proven technologies in electronics.

Single beam one-way imaging through a thick dynamic turbulent medium

A new method to record an image through a thick dynamic phase distorting medium by using a photorefractive LiNbO3 crystal is demonstrated. The method uses only one beam of light, the object light. By making use of the photorefractive fanning effect, gratings are formed in the LiNbO3 crystal through the interference between the object light and its own fanning light. Because the time scale of the distorting fluctuation is much shorter than the writing time of the LiNbO3 crystal, the fluctuated light does not induce any fanning. Therefore only the static portion of the image is recorded in the crystal, and the intensity distribution of the image can then be reconstructed at any later time.

Incoherent-to-Coherent Conversion by Use of the Photorefractive Beam-Fanning Effect and Amplification by Two-Wave Coupling in a Photorefractive Ba(1-x)Sr(x)TiO(3) Crystal

Incoherent-to-coherent conversion by use of the photorefractive beam-fanning effect and amplification by two-wave coupling have been demonstrated experimentally in a photorefractive Ba(1-x)Sr(x)TiO(3) crystal. The converted coherent image is amplified by 60x. The resolution of the amplified coherent image is ~28 line pairs/mm. A notable advantage of the method is that incoherent-to-coherent conversion and coherence amplification of the converted coherent image are realized simultaneously in a photorefractive crystal.

High-resolution incoherent-to-coherent conversion by use of the photorefractive fanning effect

We demonstrate that high-resolution incoherent-to-coherent conversion can be carried out in an incoherent-to-coherent converter based on the photorefractive fanning effect. The output coherent image has the same direction as the incident coherent beam, and thus the resolution is not limited by the grating diffraction. We obtained a resolution as high as 90.5 line pairs/mm in this experiment. The transmittance of the coherent beam relative to the intensity of the incoherent beam was measured. We also theoretically estimated the resolving power with respect to the interaction length. The numerical results agree well with the experiments.

High-resolution, high-speed photorefractive incoherent-to-coherent optical converter

We demonstrate a photorefractive incoherent-to-coherent optical converter driven by ultraviolet light that provides a 35-mus response time and an optical resolution of 124 line pairs/mm. The device, implemented in KNbO(3) , operates with a modulating intensity of 85 mW/cm(2) , which corresponds to an optical switching energy per bit of 0.5 pJ. A conversion rate of the order of 90 Gbits/(s cm(2)) is achieved. The conversion between the ultraviolet light and the visible laser beam at lambda=532 nm occurs through anisotropic Bragg diffraction at a modulated interband photorefractive grating. Our device has a better optical resolution and conversion rate than optically addressed solid-state spatial light modulators based on the photorefractive effect and multiple quantum wells, and it is also faster than devices based on liquid crystals.

Photorefractive Incoherent-to-Coherent Optical Converter Based on Anisotropic Self-Diffraction in BaTiO(3)

A photorefractive incoherent-to-coherent optical converter (PICOC) is demonstrated; conversion is accomplished by anisotropic self-diffraction in BaTiO(3). The setup of the PICOC is easy, and only two writing beams are required. The diffraction efficiency reaches 50%, and the resolution is 22 line pairs (lp)/mm in a typical-size crystal. Further, the resolution reaches 40 lp/mm when a BaTiO(3):Rh crystal of thickness 1.2 mm is used, and the diffraction efficiency is as high as 51%. The resolution of the PICOC can be increased effectively by reduction of the crystal thickness with no penalty for low diffraction efficiency.

Image transmission through a thick dynamic distorter by the photorefractive fanning effect

A new method of one-way image transmission through a thick dynamic distorter without the need for a reference beam or four-wave mixing is demonstrated. In this method there are only one object beam and one sampling beam. The response time of the photorefractive crystal must be much longer than the fluctuation period of the dynamic distorter. Thus the crystal responds only to the time-averaged intensity pattern of a rapidly varying object beam. The images, reconstructed with high fidelity, are picked up through the photorefractive fanning effect.