Photonic Switching II: Proceedings of the International Topical Meeting, Kobe, Japan, April 12-14, 1990

This book outlines the current status of research in photonic switching and details the latest scientific achievements and trends in this field. The topics treated include guided-wave devices, optically controlled devices, space-division switching, free-space and wavelength-based switching and devices, and packet switching. Several contributions provide a broad overview of some of the most rapidly developing areas, such as optical amplifiers, nonlinear optical devices, and free-space digital optics. This is an ideal reference book for researchers wishing to learn about and understand the recent rapid progress in photonic switching.

The 1990 International Topical Meeting on Photonic Switching was held April 12-14, 1990, in Kobe, Japan, in conjunction with the 1990 International Meet- ing on Optical Computing. It was sponsored by the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers in cooperation with the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Japan So- ciety of Applied Physics. The attendance was in excess of 340 persons, with 18 countries represented - a testimony to the current international interest in photonic switching. This book contains expanded and more detailed versions of most of the papers presented at the topical meeting. With the success of optical fibers there is an increased demand for a switch- ing system that can operate directly on the light present in the fibers. The goal is to reduce the total number of optical-to-electrical and electrical-to-optical transformations as far as possible, in addition to exploiting the large spec- tral and temporal bandwidth offered by such an optically transparent system.

This volume will be welcomed as a useful reference work by researchers in electrical engineering, physics, and optics who wish to learn about and understand the recent rapid progress in photonic switching.