Analog Programmable-Photonic Information

TL;DR

This paper introduces Analog Programmable-Photonic Information (API), a new theoretical framework that enhances the capabilities of programmable integrated photonics for scalable, low-power analog computation, addressing noise robustness and information limits.

Contribution

It develops the API framework that extends APC by quantifying information processing in PIP, enabling scalable and error-resilient analog photonic computing.

Findings

API demonstrates robustness against system noise and hardware imperfections.

Provides a theoretical foundation for information capacity in PIP.

Enables scalable analog computation with reduced error correction.

Abstract

The limitations of digital electronics in handling real-time matrix operations for emerging computational tasks - such as artificial intelligence, drug design, and medical imaging - have prompted renewed interest in analog computing. Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) has emerged as a promising technology for scalable, low-power, and high-bandwidth analog computation. While prior work has explored PIP implementations of quantum and neuromorphic computing, both approaches face significant limitations due to misalignments between their mathematical models and the native capabilities of photonic hardware. Building on the recently proposed Analog Programmable-Photonic Computation (APC) - a computation theory explicitly matched to the technological features of PIP - we introduce its critical missing component: an information theory. We present Analog Programmable-Photonic Information (API), a mathematical framework that addresses fundamental concepts beyond APC by examining the amount of information that can be generated, computed and recovered in a PIP platform. API also demonstrates the robustness of APC against errors arising from system noise and hardware imperfections, enabling scalable computation without the extensive error-correction overhead required in quantum computing. Together, APC and API provide a unified foundation for on-chip photonic computing, offering a complementary alternative to digital, quantum and neuromorphic paradigms, and positioning PIP as a cornerstone technology for next-generation information processing.