High-performance all-optical OR/NOR logic gate in a single semiconductor optical amplifier with delay interference filtering.

The authors have proposed and experimentally demonstrated all-optical logic gates using a single SOA and delay interference filtering that enable simultaneous logic functions of OR and NOR at 40 Gbits/s. The proposed scheme, which utilizes the combinative filtering profile of a delay interferometer and an optical bandpass filter, has great merits for use in generating logic outputs with high quality in terms of pulse shape, extinction ratio, and eye diagram. Reconfiguration between the two gates is achieved by adjusting the tunable filter and the delay interferometer.