Ultrafast and compact photonic-electronic leaky integrate-and-fire circuits based upon resonant tunnelling diodes

TL;DR

This paper introduces ultrafast, compact photonic-electronic leaky integrate-and-fire circuits using Resonant Tunnelling Diodes, demonstrating high-speed optical control and application in pattern recognition at nanosecond timescales.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental realization of ultrafast photonic-electronic neuromorphic circuits based on RTDs with controllable spiking behavior for high-speed applications.

Findings

Achieved optical input control of RTD-based spiking within 100-200 ps

Demonstrated pattern recognition using high-speed RTD circuits

Controlled spiking via bias voltage and optical pulse intensity

Abstract

This work provides a first report of ultrafast and compact photonic-electronic neuromorphic temporal leaky integrate-and-fire neuronal circuits built with Resonant Tunnelling Diodes (RTDs). We demonstrate experimentally that multiple fast (~100-200 ps) optical input pulses, arriving within a short (sub-ns long) temporal window, control the triggering of excitable responses in two different photonic-electronic RTD circuit architectures. These architectures are an electronic RTD coupled externally to a photodetector (referred to as a PD-RTD), and an integrated opto-electronic RTD device with inherent photodetection capability at infrared telecom wavelengths (referred to as an Optical RTD-PD). For both RTD systems, we reveal that the high-speed optically-triggered integrate-and-fire spiking operation can be precisely controlled by acting on the voltage bias applied to the RTD devices, or via the intensity of incoming optical pulses. Finally, we demonstrate the application of the leaky integrate-and-fire behaviour to a pattern recognition task at high-speed, with the systems triggering fast ns-long electrical spikes in response to optical inputs of weighted 4-bit digital headers.