Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peña-Gutiérrez, Sara, Gosti, Giorgio, Chen, Hongsheng, Ruocco, Giancarlo, Leonetti, Marco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13372
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918249064562688
author Peña-Gutiérrez, Sara
Gosti, Giorgio
Chen, Hongsheng
Ruocco, Giancarlo
Leonetti, Marco
author_facet Peña-Gutiérrez, Sara
Gosti, Giorgio
Chen, Hongsheng
Ruocco, Giancarlo
Leonetti, Marco
contents Emergent learning transforms a disordered optical medium into a photonic device capable of storage, recognition, and classification of arbitrary memory patterns. First, we show that the intensity at the output of a multiply scattering system can be described by a dyadic matrix, the optical-synaptic matrix, exhibiting the same form as a Hebbian synaptic matrix containing a single memory. Then, we employ emergent learning - an approach inspired by neuroscience - to exploit the vast dictionary of raw memories inherently available within a disordered optical structure, thereby engineering the optical-synaptic matrix to store a user-defined attractor, or tailored memory. Importantly these photonic structures also works as an optical comparators providing an intensity-based measure of the degree of similitude between a query pattern and the stored pattern, realizing an hardware co-localization between memory and optical operator. Our system has an almost infinite hardware capacity of tailored memories/ operators ($\mathcal{M} \sim 10^{60557}$), thus these tailored memories can be then employed as examples to build a classifier hardware based on intensity comparison without the need of additional digital transformation layers. Remarkably, this Photonic Emergent Learning platform is not only flexible and fabrication-free, but also relies primarily on analog processes, thus shifting the computational burden of training from the digital layers to the optical domain reducing the computational cost and enhancing performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_13372
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emergent learning: neuromorphic photonic computing with accelerated training
Peña-Gutiérrez, Sara
Gosti, Giorgio
Chen, Hongsheng
Ruocco, Giancarlo
Leonetti, Marco
Optics
Emergent learning transforms a disordered optical medium into a photonic device capable of storage, recognition, and classification of arbitrary memory patterns. First, we show that the intensity at the output of a multiply scattering system can be described by a dyadic matrix, the optical-synaptic matrix, exhibiting the same form as a Hebbian synaptic matrix containing a single memory. Then, we employ emergent learning - an approach inspired by neuroscience - to exploit the vast dictionary of raw memories inherently available within a disordered optical structure, thereby engineering the optical-synaptic matrix to store a user-defined attractor, or tailored memory. Importantly these photonic structures also works as an optical comparators providing an intensity-based measure of the degree of similitude between a query pattern and the stored pattern, realizing an hardware co-localization between memory and optical operator. Our system has an almost infinite hardware capacity of tailored memories/ operators ($\mathcal{M} \sim 10^{60557}$), thus these tailored memories can be then employed as examples to build a classifier hardware based on intensity comparison without the need of additional digital transformation layers. Remarkably, this Photonic Emergent Learning platform is not only flexible and fabrication-free, but also relies primarily on analog processes, thus shifting the computational burden of training from the digital layers to the optical domain reducing the computational cost and enhancing performance.
title Emergent learning: neuromorphic photonic computing with accelerated training
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13372