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The exponential growth of telecommunications bandwidth will require next generation optical networks, where multiple spatial information channels will be transmitted in parallel. To realise the full potential of parallel optical data channels, fast and scalable multichannel solutions for processing of optical data are of paramount importance. Established solutions based on the nonlinear wave interaction in photorefractive materials are slow. Here we experimentally demonstrate all-optical logical operations between pairs of simulated spatially multiplexed information channels using the coherent interaction of light with light on a plasmonic metamaterial. The approach is suitable for fiber implementation and—in principle—operates with diffraction-limited spatial resolution, 100 THz bandwidth, and arbitrarily low intensities, thus promising ultrafast, low-power solutions for all-optical parallel data processing.
Papaioannou et al. (2016) studied this question.