Electro-Optical Feedback for (Nearly) All-Optical Detection

Electro-optical feedback circuit is presented and analyzed. The method realizes a closed-loop positive feedback by feeding the electrodes of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the voltage produced by its own detection circuit. In its basic form, it is shown to act as a multi-level opto-electric quantizer. The quantization behavior disclosed herein is realized via the opto-electric conversion process itself. The circuit is modeled by an equivalent electronic representation with which the static and dynamic behavior of the circuit is characterized. A component-level electro-optical simulation is included, supporting the theoretical results.