Fig. 4: Schematic representation of the switching characteristics of the optical transistor, using the symbols of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology for source (S), drain (D), and gate (G).

These electronic devices come in two variants, which are known as enhancement or depletion type, indicated by either a dashed or solid line between S and drain D, respectively. The situation shown presumes temporal overlap between soliton and input dispersive wave (DW in). In this situation, soliton and DW give rise to a pulse at output port (DW 2), with no output at ports (DW out and soliton out). For other situations, please refer to Table 1.