Building an Optical Transistor - Can it Work?

  • Context: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter SpaceDreamer
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Optical Transistor
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
2 replies · 2K views
SpaceDreamer
Messages
45
Reaction score
0
I was recently looking in lasers and and their uses and while watching Cosmos with Newton using a prism to shows the different colors of light from white light i got thinking. I stumbled onto the top optical or photonic computers a while ago and I decided to look into building one. After looking at current research it seems that most optical transistors and computers are being build in silicon on the small scale but little on the larger scale.

I did some researched and figured with two lasers/sources one could use constructive and destructive interference to model on and off just as a transistor uses voltage to switch the current on and off can you not do the same with light. Right now part of the challenge seems to be building an all light transistor. Can anyone shed some light on this subject and would such an idea work?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
More is needed: you must be able to read the states for each on/off bit. Many techniques have been used for computer memory over the years - transistors became popular because thet are fast, can be miniaturized in silicon, and are cheap.

For slower memory consider the recodable CD/DVD: the laser makes a mark at a specific position for each bit ... on or off for mark/no mark. It can read the marks by monitoring reflections. All done one bit at a time.

You would need to work out a way to record multiple independent bits from the interference patterns, and a way to read them back.