Design and fabrication considerations for construction of monolithic, hybrid optical components for optical computing applications

Development of robust and reliable optical systems is essential in order to utilize the connectivity and parallelism of optics in conjunction with electronics in smart pixel information processors. Bulk optical imaging systems utilizing custom and off-the-shelf optics and optomechanics can provide some solutions to optical interconnections in laboratory experiments and system demonstrations. However, there are optical and size limitations to classical imaging techniques that can be overcome with the use of hybrid bulk and micro optic imaging. Use of large arrays of microlenses is an effective method of interconnecting large dilute arrays of smart pixels. The micro channel technique for 4-f imaging of focal spot arrays and device planes establishes a single optical path for each channel in the array. This type of one-to-one imaging may be usefully implemented in various imaging systems. In addition to simple one to one imaging, arrays of focal spots originating from different sources must be combined together. For example, signal inputs incident a smart pixel array must be combined with the clock array that is used to read the state of the devices. We have investigated bulk and microoptic components and subsystems to be applied to optical computing applications. This has involved study of the practical and theoretical performances of the various components. The progression of our work in implementing free-space smart pixel imaging systems establishes the techniques that will utilize micro optical components in practical system subassemblies.