Reconfigurable logic gates driven by spatially designed excitation: Spectra manipulation the coupled random laser system

Abstract

All-optical logic gates offer ultra-fast speed information processing and lower power consumption that still misses the reconfigurability, remaining beset for high power consumption and large space requirements. Considering random lasers with pump-reconstructed spectra without changing the structure, an optical platform for reconfigurable logic gate operations is developed based on random laser systems. By engineering the energy distribution of two pump regions, the interaction between the two equivalent random laser systems is changed from strongly correlated to weakly correlated, thereby realizing the transition from nonresonant laser with continuous frequency distribution to resonant random laser with discrete frequency distribution. By converting input pump signals into output random laser signals, the operation and facile reconfiguration of four 2-input logic gates (OR, NOR, NAND, and AND) in a single disordered gain film is demonstrated by simply managing the correlation of the two random laser regions through manipulating the energy distribution of the input pump. The proof-of-concept of the random laser-based optical logic gates features reconfigurability and ease of operation, providing a promising method for designing arithmetic logic units for optical network signal processing and optical computing.