SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMIC OPTICAL SWITCHING USING A DIFFRACTIVE OPTICAL ELEMENT

摘要

An optical crossbar switch system includes: a mask comprising multiple patterns, wherein at least one of the multiple patterns is a diffractive pattern; and a spatial light modulator positioned to receive at least on optical input beam and selectively couple at least a portion of each of the at least one input beam to one of the patterns of the mask, each coupled portion defining an intermediate beam, wherein each pattern, when selected by the spatial light modulator, is configured to redirect the intermediate beamto one of N targets, where N is an integer greater than two. Further, a method for selectively coupling at least one input beam to one of multiple output channels includes: selectively coupling at least a portion of each of the at least one input beam to one of multiple patterns on a mask; and diffracting at least one of the coupled portions from the mask to one of the output channels.