Photonic Synapse by Non-Linear Gain in a Vertical Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Vertical Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (VCSOAs) are proposed as photonic synaptic elements. We exploit the VCSOA's nonlinear gain to controllably tune the strength of incoming optical pulses. This technique offers a hardware-friendly, low-energy photonic weighting mechanism with high potentials for use in neuromorphic photonic hardware.