Guided wave electrooptic devices for logic and computation.

The use of guided wave optical components for performing logic and computation is proposed. The basic logic gates are switches and intensity modulators fabricated on an electrooptic substrate. The states of the switches and modulators are determined by electrical signal voltages. The output signal from each of the gates is intensity-modulated light, while inputs can be electrical signals or a combination of electrical and optical signals. Individual gates can be interconnected on a substrate by dielectric waveguides, so that sequential operations are possible. This is illustrated by a configuration for a serial-parallel binary adder. The propagation delay, as determined by the optical pathlength, is calculated to be of the order of 20-40 psec/gate, assuming that the substrate material is lithium niobate, and the logic voltage level is 5 V.