A Self-Organizing Photorefractive Frequency Decoder

Abstract

We demonstrate a self-organizing photorefractive circuit which decodes optical signals. The circuit is a pair of ring resonators with photorefractive gain and cooperative and competitive mode interactions. When a spatially multimode beam containing two optical carrier frequencies is used as the pump, the resonator self-organizes such that each frequency oscillates in spatially separate rings. Initial results, with a two crystal BaTiO3 resonator, show a contrast ratio of better than 20:1 at the two outputs.