Patent ID: 6873273

Claim:
A photonic digital-to-analog converter comprising: a) a substrate; b) a resonant cavity that is formed on said substrate and into which is injected an input optical signal, said input optical signal including an input digital optical signal comprising a serial optical bit stream representing a sequence of bits that form a digital word; and c) a heterojunction thyristor device, formed in said resonant cavity, that includes i) an anode terminal and a cathode terminal, ii) first and second channel regions disposed between said anode terminal and said cathode terminal, and iii) an electrical input terminal and an electrical output terminal coupled to opposite ends of said first channel region; d) a voltage reference, operably coupled to said electrical input terminal, that is adapted to operate in conjunction with said heterojunction thyristor device to sequentially generate at said electrical output terminal a voltage signal representing contribution of each bit of said digital word in accordance with said input digital optical signal; and e) a summing network, operably coupled to said electrical output terminal, that sequentially sums contribution of said voltage signal over said sequence of bits to produce an output analog electrical signal corresponding to said digital word.