Optical processing with electroabsorption modulators

Summary form only given. Electroabsorption (EA) modulators were primarily intended for high-speed coding as an alternative to LiNbO/sub 3/ Mach-Zehnder modulators. Beyond this application, EA modulators have been increasingly used for various optical processing functions thanks to specific properties. We focus in this paper on the use of multiple EA modulators, either in series or in parallel, for optical processing.