Demonstration of an optical inhibitory neural network.

An optical inhibitory neural network with lateral interconnections between units is demonstrated. Separate device responses, inversely proportional and sigmoid, are utilized for inhibitory and excitatory units, respectively. Preliminary experimental results for an edge enhancement illustrate the versatility of the network. The inverted semilinear transfer function for a microchannel spatial light modulator combined with a polarizer produces the inhibitory signal optically without performing optical signal subtraction.