Silicon Photonic Modulator Neuron

There has been recent interest in neuromorphic photonics, a field with the promise to access pivotal and unexplored regimes of machine intelligence. Progress has been made on isolated neurons and analog interconnects; nevertheless, this renewal of interest has yet to produce a demonstration of a silicon photonic neuron capable of interacting with other like neurons. We report a modulator-class photonic neuron fabricated in a conventional silicon photonic process line. We demonstrate the behaviors of transfer-function configurability, fan-in, inhibition, time-resolved pulse processing, and, crucially, autaptic cascadability - a sufficient set of behaviors for a device to act as a neuron participating in a network of like neurons. The silicon photonic modulator neuron constitutes the final piece needed to make photonic neural networks fully integrated on currently available silicon photonic platforms.