High-speed electrically controlled GaAs quantum well spatial light modulators: device creation and applications

GaAs asymmetric Fabry-Perot vertical cavity modulators are useful in a wide variety of applications. Vertical cavity devices have employed amplitude or phase modulation for optical switching. Amplitude modulators have been demonstrated in large format arrays. Additional uses for the pixels include directional modulation, detection, and light- emitting capability. When arrays of these deices are integrated with electronic circuits - most significantly silicon CMOS VLSI - at the pixel level, large, complex optical spatial light modulators, detectors, transceivers, computation devices, and emitters can be created for a wide variety of applications. These applications range from target recognition to SAR radar processing, to optical data routing, to optical interconnect systems, to optical memory access.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.