ULTRA-HIGH SPEED INCOHERENT-TO-COHERENT CONVERTER FOR OPTICAL COMPUTING

Many optical computing problems are centered around the processing of incoherent images. These images may be conventional visible light such as those taken with a CCD imager or camcorder. They may also take the form of infrared images in the case of missle seekers or x-ray images from medical or other sources. For optical processing, these images must be converted to either phase or amplitude modulated coherent light. This is typically accomplished by electronically feeding the originally captured image into a spatial light modulator (e.g., liquid crystal or deformable mirror array) and modulating a coherent reference beam with the 2 dimensional data pattern. The electrical input to the SLM creates a data flow bottleneck in the optical processing system due to the inherently serial input architecture. SMD proposes a novel incoherent to coherent image converter which solves this problem by providing a massively parallel, optical input feed capability, utilizing a novel combination of micromachining and ultra-thinned wafer technology to achieve an integrated incoherent to coherent image converter.