Neuromorphic Photonics

Abstract

Neuromorphic photonic applies concepts extracted from neuroscience to develop photonic devices behaving like neural systems and achieve brain-like information processing capacity and efficiency. This new field combines the advantages of photonics and neuromorphic architectures to build systems with high efficiency, high interconnectivity and paves the way to ultrafast, power efficient and low cost and complex signal processing. We explore the use of semiconductor lasers with optoelectronic feedback operating in self-pulsating mode as photonic neuron that can deliver flexible control schemes with narrow optical pulses of less than 30 ps pulse width, with adjustable pulse intervals of À2 ps/mA to accommodate specific Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) coding of events to trigger photonic neuron firing as required. The analyses cover in addition to self-pulsation performance and controls, the phase noise and jitter characteristics of such solution.