All-optical AND gate implementation using cross-polarization modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

In this letter, we demonstrate experimentally a new design for an all-optical AND gate operating in the gigahertz regime using the cross-polarization modulation effect in a semiconductor optical amplifier. The efficiency of this effect was estimated by measuring the conversion coefficients C-TE/TM and C-TM/TE indicating the TE to TM mode conversion and vice versa when the amplifier is perturbed with a wavelength tunable control beam. The all-optical gate here described differ from others developed before using semiconductor optical amplifiers in its ability to operate on nondegenerate input signals and to produce an output signal with an independent wavelength of the wavelengths of the input signals.