they diverge while passing through the electro optic element 152 similar to the spatial light modulators 130 of fig3 the electro optic element 152 may be either a liquid crystal light valve or a solid state electro optic material for reasons of faster electro optic response time greater structural strength and ease of fabrication transverse field polarization modulation electro optic materials such as represented by linbo 3 litao 3 batio 3 sr x ba sub 1 x nbo 3 and plzt are preferred these materials are believed to possess the generally equivalent structural strength characteristics as the polarization modulation material kd 2 po 4 described above electrode leads to the electrode strips 156 158 are again preferably attached using conventional wire bonding or solder bump interconnect technology the versatility of the present invention in providing for the performance of a wide variety of complex data processing functions as embodied in unique optical processing algorithms is best illustrated with reference to fig5 a through 5f in order to facilitate the description of the present invention a preferred embodiment of the optical data processor 20 is functionally illustrated in fig5 a 5b 5c 5d 5e and 5f as a series of planes a b c d e and f each plane parallel to the x and y axis and distributed along the z axis of the coordinate system 200 for the sake of simplicity of description the optical data processor 20 is shown as having an effective resolution of three by three pixels as illustrated planes a b and.