New optical calculation method provides ultra-fast processing

A logic gate is a fundamental component of a computer processor. Conventional logic gates are electronic gates—they work by shuffling around electrons—but scientists have been developing light-based optical logic gates to meet processing and transmission needs. data of next generation computing.

New Optical Chirality logic gate developed by researchers at Aalto University works about a million times faster than existing technologies, delivering lightning-fast processing speeds.

New method uses circularly polarized light as input signal. Logic gates are made from a crystalline material that is sensitive to the handedness of the circularly polarized light beam—that is, the light emitted by the crystal depends on the handedness of the input beam. This serves as the basic building block for one type of logic gate (XNOR), and the other types of logic gates are built by adding filters or other optical components.

The team also showed that a single device can contain all of their chirality logic gates operating in parallel. This is a significant step up from existing logic gates, which can only perform a single logic operation at a time. Simultaneous parallel logic gates can be used to build complex, multifunctional logic circuits.

Finally, the team demonstrated that the chirality logic gate can be controlled and configured electronically, a necessary step for hybrid optical/electrical computing.

The work was published in the journal scientific advance.