Daisuke ISHIKAWA, Atsushi OKAMOTO, Satoshi HONMA¹, Terumasa ITO, Kohei SHIMAYABU, and Kunihiro SATO²

Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0814, Japan
¹Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Medicine and Engineering, University of Yamanashi, Kofu 400-8511, Japan
²Faculty of Engineering, Hokkai-Gakuen University, Sapporo 064-0926, Japan

(Received January 31, 2007; Accepted May 5, 2007)

In this paper, we propose all-optical multifunctional logic gates for image information using photorefractive (PR) two-wave mixing. The optical setup is simply configured compared with the other all-optical logic gates for image information. The XOR-, OR-, and AND-operation are all-optically performed in the same optical setup through the transitional response of the PR medium. One can switch these logic operations simply by means of the on–off control of the signal and the pump beam illumination. We analyze the spatial distribution of beam intensity in these logic gates using a finite-difference beam propagation method (FD-BPM) and the crosstalk between adjoining pixels is examined from the result. We also experimentally verify that the XOR-, OR-, and AND-gates are realized in the same optical setup.

Key words: optical image processing, all-optical logic gate, photorefractive effect, two-wave mixing, finite-difference beam propagation method