Optical computing techniques

The properties of coherent light have found practical application in the performance of many operations on signals. In addition to solving spectral analysis and filtering problems, optical techniques can be used for analog computations During the past decade, optical techniques have received increased attention from a growing number of physicists and engineers. This increased activity has stemmed in part from the invention of the laser and in part from a realization that optical configurations can be used to perform a wide variety of operations on signals. Moreover, methods have been devised whereby two-dimensional optical operations can be converted to a multiplicity of one-dimensional operations.