All-optical AND gate implementation using cross-polarization modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

We demonstrate experimentally a new design for an all-optical AND gate operating in the gigahertz regime. The efficiency of this effect was estimated by measuring the conversion coefficients C/sub TE/TM/ and C/sub TM/TE/ indicating the TE to TM mode conversion and vice versa when the amplifier is perturbed with a wavelength tunable control beam. The all-optical gate here described differ from others developed before using semiconductor optical amplifiers in its ability to operate on nondegenerate input signals and to produce an output signal with an independent wavelength from the wavelengths of the input signals.