Processing Unit for Stacked Optical Computing System: Discrete Digital Correlator

Abstract

We have proposed the stacked optical computing system (STOCS)1 which has advantages of mechanical stability and miniaturization compared to conventional optical systems using lenses and beam splitters. The system has many processing units (STOCS-PUs) which consist of planar optical devices such as a functional interconnection device (FIC), an optical addressable spatial light modulator (SLM), and a reading light supplier (RLS)1,2. Functions of FICs are image splitting, image combining and space invariant/variant other interconnections. Output images from the FIC are written on the writing side of the SLM. The RLS is placed on the SLM, and it supplies reading light to the reading side of the SLM and transmits reading images from the SLM. We demonstrated reading out function of the RLS, and images directly written on the SLM were successfully read out2.