Optical Buffer Memory Using Polarization Bistable Vertical- Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Fig. 1: Bistable polarization operation in a VCSEL Abstract: A novel optical buffer memory with shift register function is proposed. The buffer consists of a two-dimensional array of polarization-bistable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), in which the bit state of the optical signal, “0 ” or “1” is stored as a lasing linear polarization state of 0 or 90°. Two-bit optical buffering is experimentally demonstrated using two 980 nm polarization-bistable VCSELs having a mesa structure