High-performance photonic reservoir computer based on a coherently driven passive cavity

Abstract

Reservoir computing is a recent bio-inspired approach for processing\ntime-dependent signals. It has enabled a breakthrough in analog information\nprocessing, with several experiments, both electronic and optical,\ndemonstrating state-of-the-art performances for hard tasks such as speech\nrecognition, time series prediction and nonlinear channel equalization. A\nproof-of-principle experiment using a linear optical circuit on a photonic chip\nto process digital signals was recently reported. Here we present a photonic\nimplementation of a reservoir computer based on a coherently driven passive\nfiber cavity processing analog signals. Our experiment has error rate as low or\nlower than previous experiments on a wide variety of tasks, and also has lower\npower consumption. Furthermore, the analytical model describing our experiment\nis also of interest, as it constitutes a very simple high performance reservoir\ncomputer algorithm. The present experiment, given its good performances, low\nenergy consumption and conceptual simplicity, confirms the great potential of\nphotonic reservoir computing for information processing applications ranging\nfrom artificial intelligence to telecommunications\n