Abstract

Reconfigurable massive interconnections are essential in speed communication and neural computing. The advantages of optical interconnection over its electronic counterpart are mainly high speed and massive parallelism. Photorefractive crystals, with high diffraction efficiency, are very attractive in this aspect. In this paper we use coupled wave theory to analyze the diffraction properties of volume holograms recorded on photorefractive crystals. These holograms have the merits of high diffraction efficiency, high wavelength, and angular sensitivities. Reconfigurable interconnections are implemented employing either wavelength tuning or the spatial division technique. Reflection type volume holograms are used to carry out a large number of interconnections by its finite wavelength tunability. Transmission volume holograms encoded in pinhole holograms can be easily controlled by a SLM to perform optical interconnections.

© 1989 Optical Society of America