Theoretical and experimental investigation on all-optical logic gates based on photoisomerization

Based on the photoisomerization and photoinduced birefringence in azo-containing polymers, a theoretical model for all-optical logic gates is developed and a novel scheme of all-optical logic gates using pump-probe technique is presented theoretically and realized experimentally. The all-optical logic AND, OR, XOR and XNOR gate operations have been demonstrated experimentally based on the modulation of intensity or polarization of the pump beam and signal. The experimental results show a good performance, which are in agreement with the theoretical prediction.