Abstract

Vertical cavity surface emitting (VCSE) lasers are potentially important in the area of optical processing where two-dimensional, addressable arrays of these lasers are envisioned. Although the addressing can be electrical, the required number of connections will ultimately limit the array size and their packing density. Optical addressing not only will eliminate the need for most of these connections, but will provide a natural interface with the input data which will already be in the form of optical patterns. In addition to optical addressing, optically implemented logic operations at each pixel will be useful and will eliminate the need for extra electronics. For example, with a laser that turns on if and only if both of two inputs are on (logical AND), one input pattern can gate the other. In this paper we will describe the first optically addressable VCSE lasers and the first optical AND gate with VCSE laser output.

© 1990 Optical Society of America