All-optical signal processing: data communication and storage applications

Although it holds the promise for substantial processing speed improvements, in today’s communication infrastructure optics remains largely confined to the signal transport layer, as it lags behind electronics as far as signal processing is concerned. This situation is bound to change in the near future as the tremendous growth of data traffic requires the development of new, energy efficient, and fully transparent all-optical networks for telecom and datacom applications. This book provides a comprehensive review of the state of the art of all-optical devices based on nonlinear optical materials for applications to optical signal processing. Contributors to this book present breakthrough solutions for enabling a pervasive use of optics in data communication and signal storage applications. The book content ranges from the development of innovative materials and devices, such as graphene and photonic crystal structures, to the use of nonlinear optical signal processing for secure quantum information processing, for increasing the transmission channel capacity, and for enhancing the performance of broadband radio frequency signal processing. The book is expected to benefit all researchers in the fields of optical communications, photonic devices for optical signal processing, nonlinear guided wave optics, quantum information processing, and microwave photonics, including senior undergraduate and postgraduate students and industry researchers.