A fast low-power optical memory based on coupled micro-ring lasers

By M. T. Hill, H. Dorren, T. D. Vries, X. Leijtens, J. H. Besten, B. Smalbrugge, Y. Oei, H. Binsma, G. Khoe, M. Smit. Nature, 2004

639 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The increasing speed of fibre-optic-based telecommunications has focused attention on high-speed optical processing of digital information. Complex optical processing requires a high-density, high-speed, low-power optical memory that can be integrated with planar semiconductor technology for buffering of decisions and telecommunication data. Recently, ring lasers with extremely small size and low operating power have been made, and we demonstrate here a memory element constructed by interconnecting these microscopic lasers. Our device occupies an area of 18 × 40 µm2 on an InP/InGaAsP photonic integrated circuit, and switches within 20 ps with 5.5 fJ optical switching energy. Simulations show that the element has the potential for much smaller dimensions and switching times. Large numbers of such memory elements can be densely integrated and interconnected on a photonic integrated circuit: fast digital optical information processing systems employing large-scale integration should now be viable.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0919ca4a48d7b34f769cd194809b7fb72295529c

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

A fully reconfigurable photonic integrated signal processor (2016, background): “Specifically, a photonic integrator is a device that is able to perform time integral of an optical signal, which can find applications in data processing (12), optical memory (13), and analog computing of differential equations (14).”
Optical resonators with whispering-gallery modes-part II: applications (2006, methodology): “A memory element constructed by interconnecting WGM microscopic lasers was demonstrated in [259].”
An ultra-small, low-power all-optical flip-flop memory on a silicon chip (2010, background): “Single InP ring lasers have also been demonstrated as AOFF, but with diameters of 30 m and total power consumption of several tens of mW [3].”
Review of Applications of Whispering-Gallery Mode Resonators in Photonics and Nonlinear Optics (2005, methodology): “A memory element constructed by interconnecting WGM microscopic lasers was demonstrated in [341].”
Moore's law in photonics (2012, background): “In his Nature paper on a fast and compact optical flip-flop [49] Martin Hill has shown that coupled microlasers are the most efficient approach to fast and low-power switching.”
All-Optical Signal Processing (2014, background): “memories [22], [23], and various areas of microwave photonics [24], [25].”