Demonstration of optoelectronic logic operations with differential pairs of optical thyristors

We show that differential pairs of pnpn optical thyristors can be used as optoelectronic logic elements. The logical operations AND, OR, NAND, and NOR are demonstrated and the functionality of the operation is reconfigured at the bit rate with the use of an additional optical bias bit. This opens the way to the development of fast and highly parallel optoelectronic information processing systems based on arrays of optical thyristors.