From Integrated Photonic Transceivers To All-Optical Logic

Commercial telecommunications and internet data centers have made integrated photonic transceivers commodity products. We discuss the evolution of optical transceiver technology from direct detection to culmination in digital and analog coherent optic products for both fiber optic and free-space optical communication. Could this be a path for the convergent evolution of optical logic? We discuss the history of optical and electronic logic devices. We review recent work on coherent all-optical logic. We discuss new approaches using all-dielectric meta-surface structures in silicon photonics.