Abstract

A new approach to a cascadable three terminal optical logic gate with gain and input–output isolation is proposed, simulated, and analyzed. The interaction between two orthogonally polarized self focusing filaments in an anisotropic nonlinear Kerr medium results in the spatial dragging of a strong pump beam by a weak signal wave. As a result, the strong pump is transmitted as a stable filament when the weak signal is not present, and it is dragged to the side by more than a beam width in the presence of the weak signal wave. This dragging interaction is stronger than spatial soliton collisions,^{1, 2} and as a result absolute gain is achievable. High speed, phase insensitive, cascadable logic operations, such as NOR gates, can be realized with this technique by dragging a pump filament by any of several inputs, just as in the Islam temporal soliton dragging gate.³

© 1992 Optical Society of America