An all-optical proteretic switch using semiconductor ring lasers

Proteresis, a complementary effect to well-known hysteresis, is an interesting phenomenon to be explored. As we know, the hysteretic device is a bistable switch whose states depend on the system's history whereas the proteretic device's states depend on the future. Though an all-optical implementation of the hysteretic device has been demonstrated but its complementary behavior has yet to be contrived. Therefore, this work presents the design and development of an all-optical proteretic system using semiconductor ring lasers. The design was achieved by providing a constraint feedforward path to a hysteretic feedback system. Additionally, the role of various parameters was studied in order to achieve proteresis. It is observed that the proteretic effect can be achieved only for specific conditions otherwise the system behaves as a traditional hysteretic device. The experimental results match well with the theoretical Simulink results.