Currently, the optical processing based on optical fibre networks mostly supports the capability of ∼hundreds of Tbits/s. However, the signal conversions of optical-to-electrical and then electrical-to-optical in the fibre communication are limited by the conversion operation bandwidth and communication rates. Further, with the ever-growing demand for carrying and processing data in a fast and efficient way, all-optical computing and processing become a promising candidate for the next generation computing and processing applications, due to many advantages (such as high-speed and parallel data processing), compared with their electronic counterparts. Optical computing and processing can avoid low-efficiency and low-speed opto-electronic signal conversion thanks to their fully reconfigurable ability and multi-function programmability. Indeed, all-optical logic gates are indispensable for optical computing and have been demonstrated to perform all-optical arithmetic binary calculations including addition and multiplication. Current all-optical logic gates mainly use linear and nonlinear optical effects. With the linear optical approaches, common logic gates (e.g. AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR) have been demonstrated in various optical structures such as nanowire networks, photonic crystals, plasmonic waveguides and metasurfaces, etc. As many different particles (e.g. electrons, molecules), photons process an intrinsic degree of freedom, chirality. Optical chirality, regarding left-handed and right-handed circularly polarized light, has attracted huge interest for fundamental research (e.g. to study the symmetry of single molecules or carbon nanotubes (my host group work) and applications (e.g. quantum technology, sensing and imaging). However, optical chirality-based computing and processing still remain largely elusive. In this project, we construct a universal ultrafast computing approach with the optical chirality and demonstrate their unique performance advantages, such as atomically thin footprint, multiple gates simultaneous operation in a single device, and broken bandwidth limitations, which is fundamentally different from the conventional optical gates. It suggests that optical chirality could provide a powerful degree of freedom for future optical computing and is promising for quantum computing. After published, this work was picked up by more than 20 news outlets such as ‘EurekAlert’ entitled ’New optical computing approach offers ultrafast processing’; ‘NewScientist’ entitled ‘Light-based computer could outpace traditional electrical chip designs’; ’SciTechDaily’ entitled ‘One Million Times Faster Than Current Technology: New Optical Computing Approach Offers Ultrafast Processing; ‘PhysicsWorld’ entitled ‘Chiral logic gates make ultrafast processors’, which points out that our devices that work using circularly polarized light are a million times faster than current technologies; etc. The journal ‘IEEE Spectrum’ in the reports ‘These Optical Gates Offer Electronic Access Ultrafast optical computing interfaces with traditional circuits’ highlighted that our work reveals a new and promising interface between optical computing and conventional electronic computing. The ‘Semiconductor Engineering’ recommended our work and select it into “Semiconductor Engineering’s library 10 new technical papers of October of 2022. Later on, invited by the editor Professor Lesley Cohen, we wrote a perspective paper entitled ‘Prospect of optical chirality logic computing’ for the journal Applied Physics Letters.
