Addressing and Control of High-Speed GaAs FET Logic Circuits with Picosecond Light Pulses

Abstract

We demonstrate optically-addressed operation of high-speed GaAs FET logic circuits. More specifically, using picosecond light pulses from a cw mode-locked dye laser to illuminate specific FET’s, we demonstrate complete logic level switching in NOR gates and inverters, and logic function control thereby. The latter is demonstrated by toggling a D-flip-flop in a divide-by-two mode with 76 MHz repetition rate pulses from the mode-locked dye laser. Besides their direct application to the optical addressing of ultrafast circuits, as might be required for data processing in GHz-rate optical communication links, such experiments show potential for contactless diagnostic procedures for test circuits, and for picosecond resolution measurements of the on-chip response times of specific logic gates via the use of optical sampling techniques.