Neuron-like spiking dynamics in the asymmetrically-driven dissipative photonic Bose-Hubbard dimer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates neuron-like spiking behavior in a driven dissipative photonic system modeled by the Bose-Hubbard dimer, revealing excitable dynamics, bifurcation phenomena, and noise-induced coherence resonance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel photonic Bose-Hubbard dimer model exhibiting neuron-like spiking and characterizes its bifurcation and noise effects.

Findings

Spiking dynamics arise from a global homoclinic bifurcation.

The system exhibits type-I excitability with diverging oscillation period.

Additive noise induces coherence resonance in the spiking behavior.

Abstract

We demonstrate neuron-like spiking dynamics in the asymmetrically driven dissipative photonic Bose-Hubbard dimmer model which describes two coupled nonlinear passive Kerr cavities. Spiking dynamics appear due to the excitable nature of the system. In this context, excitable excursions in the phase space correspond to spikes in the temporal evolution of the field variables. In our case, excitability is mediated by the destruction of an oscillatory state in a global homoclinic bifurcation. In this type of excitability (known as type-I) the period of the oscillatory state diverges when approaching the bifurcation. Beyond this point, the system exhibits excitable dynamics under the application of suitable perturbations. We have also characterized the effect that additive Gaussian noise has on the spiking dynamics, showing that the system undergoes a coherence resonance for a given value of the noise strength.