Competitive optics circuits for all-optical signal-processing applications

This thesis details the simulation and experimental validation of several all-optical signal-processing configurations that utilise competitive optics principles. Competitive optics refers to any number of optical systems where different optical modes or wavelengths compete for a limited system resource, such as the optical gain of some common gain medium, in order to receive amplification. The gain medium can utilise different materials including photorefractive materials (e.g. BaTO3 crystals) and saturated gain material (e.g. semiconductor optical amplifiers). Competitive optics configurations are capable of sophisticated all-optical signal processing functions ranging from all-optical wavelength conversion to optical logic and storage.; This thesis will present a series of simulated competitive optics configurations that utilise a semiconductor ring laser a basic competitive optics structure. These simulations will prove the viability and validity of competitive optics configurations that utilise saturated gain material, specifically the Semiconductor Optical Amplifier. The thesis will demonstrate the application of the Lotka-Volterra mathematical model of competitive interactions to the modelling of some of aforementioned configurations. Finally, experimental investigations of different semiconductor ring lasers configurations are presented and analysed from a competitive optics point of view.