Abstract

Optical hardware implementations of artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become a hot topic of research due to the inherent parallelism, potentially high speed and energy efficiency of optics [1]. Semiconductor laser networks are of specific interest as they are highly non-linear systems, which can be modulated at high throughput [2]. As such, photonic ANNs can be realized by leveraging the spatial degrees of freedom of multimode, large-area vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (LA-VCSELs) to implement the ANN’s neurons. Here, we demonstrate how to extend that approach and to realize deep photonic ANNs based on LA-VCSELs [3].

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