Excitability and optical pulse generation in semiconductor lasers driven by resonant tunneling diode photo-detectors.

We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, excitable nanosecond optical pulses in optoelectronic integrated circuits operating at telecommunication wavelengths (1550 nm) comprising a nanoscale double barrier quantum well resonant tunneling diode (RTD) photo-detector driving a laser diode (LD). When perturbed either electrically or optically by an input signal above a certain threshold, the optoelectronic circuit generates short electrical and optical excitable pulses mimicking the spiking behavior of biological neurons. Interestingly, the asymmetric nonlinear characteristic of the RTD-LD allows for two different regimes where one obtain either single pulses or a burst of multiple pulses. The high-speed excitable response capabilities are promising for neurally inspired information applications in photonics.

[1]  V. I. Krinsky,et al.  Image processing using light-sensitive chemical waves , 1989, Nature.

[2]  Massimiliano Di Ventra,et al.  Experimental demonstration of associative memory with memristive neural networks , 2009, Neural Networks.

[3]  Stephane Barland,et al.  Excitable Particles in an Optical Torque Wrench , 2011 .

[4]  Ian Farrer,et al.  Spiking computation and stochastic amplification in a neuron-like semiconductor microstructure , 2011 .

[5]  Pinaki Mazumder,et al.  Tunneling-Based Cellular Nonlinear Network Architectures for Image Processing , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems.

[6]  Mark R. DeYong,et al.  The design, fabrication, and test of a new VLSI hybrid analog-digital neural processing element , 1992, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks.

[7]  H. I. Cantu,et al.  Delayed Feedback Dynamics of Liénard-Type Resonant Tunneling-Photo-Detector Optoelectronic Oscillators , 2013, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[8]  H.J. De Los Santos,et al.  Physics-based RTD current-voltage equation , 1996, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[9]  J. García-Ojalvo,et al.  Effects of noise in excitable systems , 2004 .

[10]  Sylvain Barbay,et al.  Excitability in a semiconductor laser with saturable absorber. , 2011, Optics letters.

[11]  Sven Höfling,et al.  Light-induced stochastic resonance in a nanoscale resonant-tunneling diode , 2011 .

[12]  D Goulding,et al.  Excitability in a quantum dot semiconductor laser with optical injection. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[13]  A. Hodgkin,et al.  A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve , 1952, The Journal of physiology.

[14]  Nynke H. Dekker,et al.  Excitable Particles in an Optical Torque Wrench , 2011 .