Abstract

Recently, Lohmann and Weigelt¹ have proposed an optical half-adder for binary addition. We reported a technique to perform XOR operation using programmable liquid crystal televisions (LCTVs).² Since XOR operation is the key operation in a binary adder, we report an optical half-adder constructed with an LCTV. The binary number can be easily written into the LCTV with respect to the polarization of the LCTV. The output would be the half-sum of two binary numbers. This programmable half-adder can be easily extended for performing large arrays of numbers. We stress that this proposed half-adder can also be used as a full adder, if an optical read-only-memory (OROM) is implemented. The OROM is used for the carry transmission and overflow error detection. We have also illustrated that a 2-bit full adder can actually be built with the OROM concept.

© 1987 Optical Society of America