160 femtosecond optical correlator

Degenerate ground state conjugated polymers exhibit large third order nonlinear optical susceptibilities including substantial two-photon absorption. By using a machine architecture suited to these material properties, ultrafast optical processors are possible. A four wave mixing optical correlator was built using a degenerate ground state conjugated polymer, poly(1,6-heptadiester). The continuously updated processor correlates two 5000 pixel images in less than 160 fs, achieving peak processing rates of 3/spl times/10/sup 16/ operations per second, which is the fastest data processing rate yet achieved.