Can you explain how optical computers work?

 Optical computers, also known as photonic computers, perform digital computations using photons. Light waves produced by lasers or incoherent sources are used as a primary means for carrying out numerical calculations, reasoning, artificial intelligence, data processing, data storage and data communications for computing ¹²³. Photons have proved to give us a higher bandwidth than the electrons we use in conventional computer systems ³.

The main optical components required for computing in an optical computer are: VCSEL (Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser), which is a semiconductor micro laser diode that emits light vertically from the surface and converts electrical signals to optical signals; optical transistors, which are nonlinear optical crystals used to manipulate light beams into controlling other light beams; and optical storage, which is used to store data ⁴.

Optical computing has several advantages over traditional electron-based computing. Photons of different wavelengths do not interact with one another, so when a laser of wavelength A is used to encode information A, it can be superimposed with laser of wavelength B, C, D and so on. This allows for much faster and more efficient computation, as photons can be easily manipulated and controlled to perform a wide range of tasks ⁵.

I hope this helps!