All-optical signal processing for optical packet switching

We present three optical signal processing functional blocks that enable 1×N optical packet switching. An ultrafast asynchronous multioutput all-optical header processor is demonstrated with a terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer in combination with a header preprocessor. It is shown that self-induced polarization rotation can be used for both the header processor and the header preprocessor. The second functional block is optical buffering. This is shown with both a laser neural network and a recirculating buffer. Related to this is a three-state all-optical memory based on coupled lasers, which increases the number of possible output states of an optical packet switch. © 2004 Optical Society of Americ