Abstract

We describe a photonic ring counter that demonstrates cascadability of symmetric self-electro-optic-effect (S-SEEDs) devices¹,² at a bit rate of 12.5 Mb/s for conventional operation and at a bit rate of 27 Mb/s when the devices are operated as optical signal-sense amplifiers. In each of these two experiments, the average laser-diode power incident on each device was less than 650μW. The system switching speeds, which agree well with speeds calculated by using the measured switching energies of the devices, were limited by the laser power incident on the devices. However, saturation of the quantum-well material, which results in reduced contrast ratio and bistability width, prevented more laser power from being used. In spite of this, we expect that switching speeds of optical-processing systems using SEEDs will continue to improve.

© 1990 Optical Society of America