Materials for optical information processing.

01 January 1984

New Image

The goal for optical information processing is to use the unique characteristics of light which are not readily achieved with electronic devices: Namely, ultra-high speed (picosecond), a high degree of parallelism (i.e. image processing) and conductor- free interconnection. The requirements of the nonlinear materials to perform such functions using all-optical interactions are discussed and the limitations of the nonlinear mechanisms are outlined.