Resonate-and-Fire Photonic-Electronic Spiking Neurons for Fast and Efficient Light-Enabled Neuromorphic Processing Systems

Abstract

Neuromorphic computing seeks to replicate the spiking dynamics of biological neurons for brain-inspired computation. While electronic implementations of artificial spiking neurons have dominated to date, photonic approaches are attracting increasing research interest as they promise ultrafast, energy-efficient operation with low-crosstalk and high bandwidth. Nevertheless, existing photonic neurons largely mimic integrate-and-fire models, but neuroscience shows that neurons also encode information through richer mechanisms, such as the frequency and temporal patterns of spikes. Here, we present a photonic-electronic resonate-and-fire (R-and-F) spiking neuron that responds to the temporal structure of high-speed optical inputs. This is based on a light-sensitive resonant tunnelling diode that produces excitable spikes in response to nanosecond, low-power (100 microwatt) optical signals at infrared telecom wavelengths. We experimentally demonstrate control of R-and-F dynamics through inter-pulse timing of the optical stimuli and applied bias voltage, achieving bandpass filtering of both analogue and digital inputs. The R-and-F neuron also supports optical fan-in via wavelength-division multiplexed inputs from four vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). This electronic-photonic neuron exhibits key functionalities - including spike-frequency filtering, temporal pattern recognition, and digital-to-spiking conversion - critical for neuromorphic optical processing. Our approach establishes a pathway toward low-power, high-speed temporal information processing for light-enabled neuromorphic computing.