All-Optical Reinforcement Learning In Solitonic X-Junctions

M. Alonzo, D. Moscatelli, L. Bastiani, A. Belardini, C. Soci, E. Fazio

Index: 10.1038/s41598-018-24084-w

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Abstract

Ethology has shown that animal groups or colonies can perform complex calculation distributing simple decision-making processes to the group members. For example ant colonies can optimize the trajectories towards the food by performing both a reinforcement (or a cancellation) of the pheromone traces and a switch from one path to another with stronger pheromone. Such ant’s processes can be implemented in a photonic hardware to reproduce stigmergic signal processing. We present innovative, completely integrated X-junctions realized using solitonic waveguides which can provide both ant’s decision-making processes. The proposed X-junctions can switch from symmetric (50/50) to asymmetric behaviors (80/20) using optical feedbacks, vanishing unused output channels or reinforcing the used ones.