All-optical half-adder in a linear three-core fiber device

Abstract

The half-adder is one of the most useful combinational logic functions for data processing. Many research papers in the literature propose nonlinear all-optical half-adders. Few studies propose linear all-optical devices, and those that do usually employ microstructured 2D photonic crystals. This work presents the numerical acquisition of an all-optical half-adder using a linear three-core fiber device. The device presents high performance and acceptable values of fabrication and modulation tolerance. It can be made using any fiber technology and propagated by pulses of any wavelength. Depending on the type of fiber used, the precision needed to fabricate the device’s smallest structures can range from 20 nm to 90 nm. This result is evidence of the possibility of obtaining nonlinear logical processing using only fiber design.