Reconfigurable optical logic gate of AND, OR, NAND and NOR based on polarization modulation with direct detection

Abstract

We propose a new scheme to realize optical logic gates using polarization addition with direct detection. Two polarizations of the optical signal are modulated respectively by two binary inputs to represent four different states, while direct detection is used to map the four states to the corresponding binary output. Experiments are successfully carried out to realize 4 basic logic gates at the data rate of 1Gbit/s.