Program to develop an optical transistor and switch

Work during this period evaluated analytically the concept of multistage optical transistors based on two spectroscopically complementary materials. It is shown that very high total gains can be obtained with either of two alternatives, viz., (1) a chain of discrete complementary transistor units, or (2) a complementary transistor continuum (a concept which has no electronic analog). Whereas the total gain grows exponentially with the number of stages, the required constant photon fluxes grow only linearly with that number. High signal-to-noise ratios can be obtained without the need of cooling. However, the spectroscopic matching conditions of the two complementary materials are stringent. Under the guidance of the theoretical work, a search for suitably matching materials is now underway.