All-Optical Switching And All-Optical Logic Gates Based On Bacteriorhodopsin

We demonstrate an all-optical switching using a bacteriorhodopsin (bR) film. The transmission of the bR film is investigated using the pump-probe method. A diode-pumped second harmonic YAG laser (= 532nm which is around the maximum initial B state absorption) was used as a pumping beam and a cw He-Ne laser (=632 nm which is around the peaks of K and O states) was used as a probe. Due to the nonlinear intensity induced excited state absorption of the K, L, M, N, and O states in the bR photocycle, the switching characteristics are sensitive to the intensity of the probe and pump beams. Based on this property, we design an all-optical operating device functioning as 11 kinds of variable binary all-optical logic gates. The incident 532nm beam acts as an input to the logic gate and the transmission of the 632nm bears the output of the gate