Real-time optical color encoding, hard-clipping correlation, associative memory, and Boolean logic functions with microchannel spatial light modulator

This dissertation is devoted to the applications of microchannel spatial light modulator to real-time optical processing and logic operations. Four real-time systems are discussed.;The first system is an MSLM-based white-light image processor. When a birefringent crystal is placed in the read-out light path, a white-light beam (instead of a commonly used laser light) can be used to read out the data written on the MSLM. The black-and-white input is thereby pseudo-color encoded on the output. The capabilities of the system include real-time intensity pseudo-color encoding, analog threshold hard clipping, and image subtraction by colors.;The second system is a real-time hard-clipping joint transform correlator. By using the hard-clipping property of the MSLM, it was possible to improve the energy detection efficiency and get sharper correlation peaks. With a microcomputer controlling the inexpensive liquid crystal television (the input data interfacing device), the correlator has an adaptive processing capability.;To complement the correlation method, an optical holographic associative memory system was developed. It can meet some problems insoluble by correlation techniques, Here, the MSLM was used as an active nonlinear device in an outer-product neural network model. Several association rules were obtained.;Finally, to investigate the possibilities of digital optical computing, a system that can execute all sixteen Boolean gates and some logic functions in a two-dimensional manner was developed. Two design examples for optical logic elements are shown. The first one is an optical full adder which is combinational logic; the other one is RS flip-flop that belongs to sequential logic. The MSLM plays a key role in all these architectures for parallel optical data processing. Experimental demonstrations are given at the end of each chapter to support the concepts discussed.