Optically-reconfigurable integrated optical directed logic computing based on silicon photonics

Abstract

Optical directed logic, as a novel logical operation scheme, harmoniously combines the benefits of optical and electrical signals, surpassing traditional electrical and all-optical logic operations in terms of the flexibility and power consumption. Its potential in high-speed optical signal processing and electro-optical computing is immense. However, achieving tunability of the logic function normally relies on external electrical tuning or multiple laser sources, which often results in excessive power consumption and costs. In this work, by utilizing the polarization state of light within the optical directed logic, we demonstrate an optical directed logic device on a silicon-based platform. This single device can realize three different logic operations, which are XNOR, XOR and NAND, by simply changing the input light's polarization state, which comes at a minimal additional power consumption. Moreover, we also significantly enhance the device's response speed through a novel side-integrated metal thermal phase shifter, reducing the response time to 5 µs. Ultimately, we demonstrate logic operations at 60 kbps which maintains a leading standard among the currently reported thermally tuning optical-directed logic (ODL) devices, and successfully integrated polarization division multiplexing technique into ODL devices. This result provides a novel method to realize high-speed optical directed logic with high reconfigurability, which presents significant application prospects in the high-speed optical information processing field.