The Photon-Photon Gate seedling researches high speed, optical switching as one approaches the quantum-mechanical limit.
In principle, a photon-photon gate offers the ability to switch a data bit at high operating speeds with minimal expended energy. The University of California, San Diego research team is seeking to create an optical parametric mixer that exhibits near-isotropic photon gate response. This mixer will be constructed by measuring the fluctuations along the length of an optical fiber with sub-nanometer accuracy and using this information to synthesize a waveguide with near-ideal response. The seedling project culminates with the demonstration of an all-optical gate that is capable of single-bit switching with fewer than 20 photons at a rate of 100Gbps.
