Implementing optical field analog computation with Bacteriorhodopsin : a feasibility study

This thesis describes the use of Bacteriorhodpsin (BR) to perform optical ana log field computation, specifically, analog addition. Bacteriorhodpsin, a photoac-tive photocyclic protein, was modeled and simulated through four experimental setups. Combinations of two wavelengths, which were the peak absorption wave lengths for the two major states M and bR, made up the four experiments. The setups which combined two different wavelength were better suited to doing addi-tion than the same-wavelength setups. We showed that the ratio of write to read time controls the slope of the approximately linear relation between the input and the output. Conversely, the read intensity determines the y-intercept of the line. By solving these (approximate) equations we were able to find read/write parameters that enable BR to perform analog addition, with the sum represented by the same power range as the inputs.