A road towards the photonic hardware implementation of artificial cognitive circuits

Many technologies we use are inspired by nature. This happens in different domains, ranging from mechanics to optics to computer sciences. Nature has incredible potentialities that man still does not know or that he striving to learn through experience. These potentialities concern the ability to solve complex problems through approaches of various types of distributed intelligence. In fact, there are forms of intelligence in nature that differ from that of man, but are nevertheless exceedingly efficient. Man has often used as a model those forms of distributed intelligence that allow colonies of animals to develop places of housing or collective behaviors of extreme complexity. Recently, M. Alonzo et alii (Sci.Rep. 8, 5716 (2018)) published a hardware implementation to solve complex routing problems in modern information networks by exploiting the immense possibilities offered by light. This article presents an addressable photonic circuit based on the decision-making processes of ant colonies looking for food. When ants search for food, they modify their surroundings by leaving traces of pheromone, which may be reinforced and function as a type of path marker for when food has been found. This process is based on stigmergy, or the modification of the environment to implement distributed decision-making processes. The photonic hardware implementation that this work proposes is a photonic X-junction that simulates this stigmergic procedure. The experimental implementation is based on the use of non-linear substrates, i.e. materials that can be modified by light, simulating the modification induced by the ants on the surrounding environment when they leave the pheromone traces. Here, two laser beams generate two crossing channels in which the index of refraction is increased with respect to the whole substrate. These channels act as integrated waveguides (almost self-written optical fibers) within which optical information can be propagated (as happens for the ants that follow traces of pheromone already “written”). The proposed device is a X-junction with two crossing waveguides, whose refractive index contrast is defined by the intensities of the writing light beams. The higher the writing intensity, the greater the induced index variation, as if it were an increasingly intense pheromone trace. The information will follow the most contrasted harm of the junction, which is driven and eventually switched by the writing light intensity. Any optical information that will be sent to the device will follow the most intense trace, i.e. the most contrasted waveguide. The paper demonstrates a device that can be wholly operated using the light and that can be the basis of complex hardware configurations that might reproduce the stigmergic distributed intelligence. This is a highly significant innovation in the field of electronic and photonic technologies, within which artificial cognition and decision processes are implemented into a hardware circuit and not in a software code

Addressable refraction and curved soliton waveguides using electric interfaces

A great deal of interest over the years has been directed to the optical space solitons for the possibility of realizing 3D waveguides with very low propagation losses. A great limitation in their use for writing complex circuits is represented by the impossibility of making curved structures. In the past, solitons in nematic liquid crystals, called nematicons, were reflected on electrical interfaces, and recently on photorefractive spatial solitons as well. In the present work we investigate refraction and total reflection of spatial solitons with saturable electro-optic nonlinearity, such as the photorefractive ones, on an electric wall acting as a reflector. Using a custom FDTD code, the propagation of a self-confined beam was analyzed as a function of the applied electric bias. The electrical reflector has been simulated by applying different biases in two adjacent volumes. We have observed both smaller and larger angles of refraction, up to the critical π/2-refraction condition and then total reflection. The radii of curvature of the associated guides can be varied from centimeters down to hundreds of microns. The straight guides showed losses down to 0.07 dB/cm as previously observed, while the losses associated with single curves were estimated down to 0.2 dB

Study of magnetic switch for surface plasmon-polariton circuits

In recent years, technological development has focused on the construction of ever smaller devices, characterized by dimensions limited to the nanometer order and by a very low energy requirement to be able to function. This allows them to be integrated into chips, which are then able to perform many tasks from filtering to computation. Here, we present a magnetic switch capable of working with surface plasmon polaritons

Logic functions, devices, and circuits based on parametric nonlinear processes

Second-harmonic generation and parametric down-conversion processes have been studied as the basis of all-optical logic gates. All possibilities that are obtainable with both the low and high conversion efficiencies of such processes have been analyzed here. XOR and AND gates are also experimentally proven by using 1-ps pulses at 800 nm within a beta-BaB(2)O(4) crystal, reaching conversion efficiencies of as high as 80%. Based on these phenomena, complex algebraic operations are proposed for performing several different logic functionalities particularly concerning network switching and arithmetic calculation

Supervised learning of soliton X-junctions in lithium niobate films on insulator

In this Letter, the first implementation, to our knowledge, of X-junctions between photorefractive soliton waveguides in lithium niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) films is reported. The experiments were performed on 8 μm thick films of congru- ent undoped LiNbO3. Compared with bulk crystals, the use of films reduces the soliton formation time, allows more con- trol over the interaction between the injected soliton beams, and opens a route to integration with silicon optoelectronics functions. The created X-junction structures show effective supervised learning, directing the signals propagated inside the soliton waveguides into the output channels highlighted by the control assigned by the external supervisor. Thus, the obtained X-junctions have behaviors analogous to biological neurons

Submagmatic to Solid-State Deformation Microstructures Recorded in Cooling Granitoids during Exhumation of Late-Variscan Crust in North-Eastern Sicily

Late-Variscan granitoid rocks of trondhjemitic and granitic composition, intruded in migmatitic paragneisses in the north-eastern Peloritani Mountains (southern Italy) at ~310 Ma and ~300 Ma, respectively, exhibit a range of deformation microstructures developed under a shear regime at decreasing temperatures. Non-coaxial deformation is documented by sigmoidal feldspar porphyroclasts, mica fish, and asymmetric boudins affecting tiny andalusite crystals. Late-Variscan shearing during granitoid cooling is constrained by largely represented chessboard patterns in quartz and, especially, submagmatic fractures in plagioclase, indicating deformation at high-temperature conditions (T > 650 °C), in the presence of melt. Submagmatic deformation was extensively superseded by deformation at lower temperatures. Examples of solid state-high temperature deformation-related microstructures (T > 450 °C) include feldspar bulging, quartz grain boundary migration, and subgrain rotation recrystallization. Finally, low temperature subsolidus microstructures (T < 450 °C) consist of quartz bulging, mica kinks, and feldspar twinning and bending. A complete sequence of deformation, operating from submagmatic to low-temperature subsolidus conditions is recorded in both the older and younger granitoids, suggesting a duration of ~20 Ma for shear zone activity during post-collisional exhumation of the Variscan middle crust in southernmost Italy

Plasmonic-Solitonic coupling structure

The applications of optics, in particular non-linear optics, have joined the electrical ones in many contexts, often equaling or exceeding them thanks to the characteristics ensured by the physical nature of light such as high speed of propagation and low losses. In recent years, nanotechnologies combined with plasmon propagation are shaping a new development scenario that touches areas such as medicine, robotics or neurobiology. In fact, nano-devices are able to reproduce a very large number of functions ensuring very small dimensions. Among these, the applications of surface plasmon polariton waves are becoming more and more important, thanks to their peculiar behavior both as an electric wave and as a light wave. In this work we present an innovative structure consisting of a nano metallic waveguide on which it is possible to propagate a surface-plasmon- polariton signal at the interface with a photorefractive dielectric material. At the end of the guide, the diffracting light can generate, under suitable conditions, a self-confined light beam (bright-screening-photorefractive soliton). In this way the polariton plasmon waves propagating at the interface are automatically coupled within a soliton-based optical waveguide. By definition, soliton guides have very low propagation losses, opening the possibility of using this type of hybrid interconnection in extended complex circuits, for example as memories, thanks to the intrinsic plasticity of the photorefractive nonlinear refractive index

Possible crossover from BCS superconductivity to Bose-Einstein condensate in quark matter

The possibility of the crossover from the BCS pairing to the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of diquarks with going down in density is discussed in the framework of in the Nambu Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that the quark matter at moderate density may be close to the intermediate of the crossover, the precursory regime to the BEC phase.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Contributed to International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics: QCD@Work 2007, Martina Franca, Valle d'Itria, Italy, 16-20 Jun 200

Chiral Lagrangians with tensor sources

The implementation of tensor sources in Chiral Lagrangians allows the computation of Green functions and form factors involving tensor currents, that is, quark bilinears of the form \bar{q}_i\sigma^{\mu\nu}q_j. Whereas only four new terms show up at O(p^4), we find around a hundred of them at O(p^6). So it becomes essential to ensure that this set o operators is indeed minimal and non-redundant (i.e., it is a basis). We discuss two phenomenological applications in the context of vector meson resonances and the radiative pion decay.Comment: Talk given at the 4th International Worshop on Quantum ChromoDynamics, Theory and experiment, June 16-20, 2007. Martina Franca - Valle d'Itria - Ital

Evading 1/m_b-suppressed IR divergencies in QCDF: Bs-->KK Decays and B_{d,s} mixing

We analyze the deviations of the mixing induced CP asymmetry in B-->phi Ks from sin(2beta), as well as the deviations of the asymmetries in Bs-->K*K*, Bs-->phi K* and Bs-->phi phi from sin(2beta_s), that arise in SM due to penguin pollution. We use a theoretical input which is short-distance dominated in QCD-factorization and thus free of IR-divergencies. We also provide alternative ways to extract angles of the unitarity triangle from penguin-mediated decays, and give predictions for Bs-->K*K* observables.Comment: 5 pages. Talk given at the International Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamics: QCD@Work 2007, Martina Franca, Italy, June 200