ULTRAFAST SWITCHING WITH NONLINEAR OPTICS

Remember when we optimized our computer programs to minimize the memory usage, even at the expense of readability of the code? Now, with an abundance of memory, we no longer worry about the memory requirements. Remember when we minimized the gate count in a circuit by using techniques such as Karnaugh maps? Now, with VLSI and ULSI chips, gate count is no longer an issue. Yet in telecommunications many applications still need to be optimized to fit within bandwidth limitations. Researchers in optics and photonics dream of making bandwidth an inexpensive, virtually limitless commodity, so that we will be able to tailor applications to optimize their functionality without regard to bandwidth.Electronic switching is a bottleneck that could limit singlechannel network speeds to about 5 gigabits per second. Alloptical switching and logic gates could repeal this speed limit on the information superhighway. © 1994, American Institute of Physics. All rights reserved.