Nanometric summation architecture based on optical near-field interaction between quantum dots

A nanoscale data summation architecture is proposed and experimentally demonstrated based on the optical near-field interaction between quantum dots. Based on local electromagnetic interactions between a few nanometric elements via optical near fields, we can combine multiple excitations at a certain quantum dot, which allows construction of a summation architecture. Summation plays a key role for content-addressable memory, which is one of the most important functions in optical networks. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.