Reconfigurable Optical Interconnection Using Photorefractive Holograms

The use of photorefractive holograms in conjunction with a spatial light modulator (SLM) to realize a reconfigurable optical interconnection with very high energy efficiency is briefly discussed. In this approach, the SLM is used as a programmable binary matrix mask to encode the interconnection pattern to a coherent laser beam whereas the photorefractive crystal is used as a dynamic holographic medium to store the pattern and to efficiently diffract the readout beam into the selected channels at high speed. We report recent experimental results on issues such as energy efficiency, reconfiguration time, contrast, and uniformity.