All-optical switching and XOR-gating using cross-polarization modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Summary form only given. High speed optical signal processing becomes a key issue in new high bit-rate optical networks. Switching, gating, wavelength conversion and regeneration increase the performance and flexibility of networks. Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) represent strong candidates for inclusion in operational schemes. They exhibit optical gain, strong nonlinear behavior and can be integrated in photonic circuits. Cross-gain, cross-phase modulation and four-wave mixing have received a lot of attention recently. Cross-polarization modulation has been studied in a recent paper. We demonstrate two experimental schemes performing an all-optical switch and a XOR gate respectively including fast operation.