Abstract: An optical notching filter in which a band of radio frequencies such as the RF input of a radio receiver is an input signal. The input signal modulates a laser beam and the modulated beam is optically Fourier transformed. A programmable optical notching filter spatially filters the electromagnetic interference noise from the transformed beam and the thus filtered beam is optically inverse Fourier transformed. A photo-combining of the filtered beam with a focused laser local oscillator beam down-converts the filtered beam to the original input signal minus electromagnetic interference.