All-optical neuromorphic XOR operation with inhibitory dynamics of a single photonic spiking neuron based on a VCSEL-SA

Abstract

We propose a simple hardware architecture for solving exclusive OR (XOR) tasks in a single step by using a single photonic spiking neuron based on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with an embedded saturable absorber (VCSEL-SA) subject to dual-polarized pulsed optical injection. We model the inhibitory photonic spiking neuron by extending the Yamada model and spin-flip model to incorporate the two polarization-resolved modes and the saturable absorber. It is shown that, by carefully adjusting the temporal difference according to the inhibitory window, the XOR operation can be realized in a single photonic spiking neuron, which is interesting and valuable for the photonic neuromorphic computing and information processing.