Photonic Computing

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Overview

Photonic computing studies how optical components such as interferometers, diffractive layers, resonators, and lasers can perform operations used in machine learning and optimization. Approaches include photonic tensor cores for neural-network and transformer workloads, passive diffractive processors, and reservoir computers that use a device’s physical dynamics; quantum photonic methods also explore learning and optimization with photon-based states. These systems are tested on tasks ranging from image and speech recognition to forecasting, classification, and combinatorial optimization, with energy, throughput, and accuracy compared against electronic baselines. A central challenge is turning optical speed or energy advantages into reliable end-to-end gains despite noise, limited memory and readout, encoding and precision costs, and constraints in scaling and calibrating hardware.

Latest papers

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47 papers4 papers in the last four weeks, up 33% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Functional Superoscillations in a Wave Processor

    Oct 25, 2026Yuntian Wang, Md Sadman Sakib Rahman, Aydogan OzcanAnalog ComputingPhotonic Computing

    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · Bioengineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

  2. Wavelength Diversity Expands the Expressive Power of Optical Computing

    Oct 16, 2026Shiqi Chen, Che-Yung Shen, Parnian Ghapandar Kashani +2Photonic ComputingUniversal Approximation

    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · Bioengineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

  3. Targeted search shows that random-device testing underestimates worst-case error in a simulated wave-based neural operator

    Oct 5, 2026Samrendra Roy, Jason Yoo, Souvik Chakraborty +1Fourier Neural OperatorUncertainty Quantification

    Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA · Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India · Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence (ScAI), Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India +1

  4. Landscape-Dependent Performance of Photonic Quantum Solvers in QUBO Feature Selection for Financial Risk Detection

    Oct 2, 2026Nirvik Sahoo, Paul Robert GriffinFeature SelectionPhotonic Computing

    Singapore Management University 80 Stamford Road, Singapore 178902

  5. LCAP: Population-Informed Latent Chip Adaptation from Few Output Probes for Photonic Neural Networks

    Sep 15, 2026Tianyu Gao, Guantian ZhengSim-to-Real TransferPhotonic Computing

    City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · Sichuan University, Chengdu, China · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  6. Photonic reservoir computing with dimensionally compressed readout

    Sep 7, 2026Gerald Kobi, Mohab Abdalla, Miguel C. Soriano +1Reservoir ComputingRandomized Sketching

    Université de Lorraine, CentraleSupélec, LMOPS, F-57000 Metz, France · Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos (IFISC), CSIC–UIB, Campus UIB, E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain

  7. Hardware Trojan Threats to Multi-Chiplet Photonic Neural Network Accelerators

    Sep 6, 2026Sudeep PasrichaCybersecurityPhotonic Computing

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Colorado State University

  8. Optically Writable Atomic Vapor Memory as a Substrate for Optical Reservoir Computing

    Aug 18, 2026Elizabeth Robertson, Mingwei Yang, Lina Jaurigue +3Photonic ComputingReservoir Computing

    Institute of Space Research, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Berlin, Germany · Institute of Physics, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany · Institut für Physik, Technische Universität Illmenau, Illmenau, Germany +3

  9. Universal Function Approximation via Diffractive Optical Processors: Physical Limits, Error Bounds, and Learnability

    Aug 5, 2026Md Sadman Sakib Rahman, Che-Yung Shen, Aydogan OzcanDiffractive Neural NetworksUniversal Approximation

    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · Bioengineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA · California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

  10. Constrained Co-Design for Photonic Bayesian Neural Networks

    Aug 3, 2026Hendrik Borras, Xiao Wang, Bernhard Klein +4Bayesian Neural NetworksUncertainty Quantification

    Hardware and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Institute of Computer Engineering, Heidelberg University, Germany · Neuromorphic Quantumphotonics Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics, Heidelberg University, Germany

  11. MDTransformer: A Hardware-Software Co-Design of Mode-Division Photonic Transformer Accelerator with Inverse-Designed Coherent Crossbar

    Jul 28, 2026Solomon Micheal Serunjogi, Rachmad Vidya Wicaksana Putra, Ayat Taha +2Efficient Transformer InferencePhotonic Computing

    Photonic Research Lab (PRL), Division of Engineering, New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates · eBRAIN Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

  12. Approximate reservoir computing with a semiconductor laser for reducing energy consumption

    Jul 25, 2026Tatsuki Ito, Kazutaka Kanno, Satoshi Kawakami +1Energy-Efficient MLReservoir Computing

    Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-okubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama City, Saitama 338-8570, Japan · Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan

  13. Photonic reservoir computing with complex networks

    Jul 25, 2026Sion Park, Kohei Watabe, Satoshi Sunada +2Reservoir ComputingPhotonic Computing

    Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-okubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama City, Saitama 338-8570, Japan · Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Science and Engineering, Kanazawa University, Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, 920-1192, Japan

  14. PN-QNN: Harnessing Physical Noise as a Native Regularizer in Photonic Hybrid Quantum Neural Networks

    Jul 22, 2026Farah Elnakhal, Alberto Marchisio, Nouhaila Innan +2Hybrid Quantum-Classical MLPhotonic Computing

    Science Division, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE · eBrain Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Center for Quantum and Topological Systems, NYUAD Research Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE +1

  15. Opto-ViT-v2: Noise-Resilient On-Chip Fine-Tuning for Photonic Near-Sensor Vision Transformer Accelerators

    Jul 20, 2026Xuming Chen, Deniz Najafi, Mehrdad Morsali +5Fine-TuningVision Transformer

    Case Western Reserve University · USA · New Jersey Institute of Technology +1

  16. Program-Synthesis-Driven Autodesign of Universal Unitary Operators

    Jul 11, 2026Yifei Zhang, Dong Chen, Fan Wang +6Automated Algorithm DiscoveryProgram Synthesis

    Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Ion-beam Application (MOE), Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China · Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, Beijing 100095, China · Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HongKong, China +6

  17. Parameter-Efficient Continuous-Variable Photonic Quantum Neural Networks for Edge Quantum AI: Demonstration in Oral Cancer Detection

    Jun 26, 2026Akshay Bhagwan Sonawane, Sophie Choe, Lakshman TamilMedical Image AnalysisHybrid Quantum-Classical ML

    Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX 75080

  18. Trainable Photonic Measurement for Physics-Informed PDE Learning

    Jun 17, 2026Jiale Linghu, Hao Dong, Yangshuai WangNeural PDE SolversQuantum Machine Learning

    School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xidian University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710071, China. · Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 119077, Singapore.

  19. HAMON: Passive Optical Sequence Mixing for Long-Horizon Forecasting

    Jun 15, 2026Alper YıldırımLong-Term Time Series ForecastingDiffractive Neural Networks

  20. Generative modelling powered by room-temperature polariton condensates

    Jun 13, 2026Yuan Wang, Marcin Muszynski, Avinash Dash +3Conditional Image GenerationPhotonic Computing

    School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom · Department of Physics, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA · 3Physics Doctoral Program, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10016, USA +1

  21. Optical Implementation of Equilibrium Propagation Using Spatial Photonic Ising Machines

    Jun 11, 2026Dimitri Vanden Abeele, Daniele Veraldi, Davide Pierangeli +2Equilibrium PropagationEnergy-Efficient ML

    Laboratoire d’Information Quantique C.P. 224, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium · Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

  22. Otters++: A Time-to-first-spike Based Energy Efficient Optical Spiking Transformer

    Jun 11, 2026Zhanglu Yan, Jiayi Mao, Kaiwen Tang +6Efficient Transformer InferenceSpiking Transformers

    Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore · School of Engineering, Westlake University · College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University +2

  23. DxPTA: An Architecture Design Space Exploration with Optical Dataflow-guided Strategy for HW/SW Co-Design of Photonic Transformer Accelerators

    Jun 2, 2026Rachmad Vidya Wicaksana Putra, Solomon Micheal Serunjogi, Mahmoud Rasras +1Efficient Transformer InferenceHardware-Software Co-Design

    eBRAIN Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates · Photonic Research Lab (PRL), Division of Engineering, New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

  24. Breaking the Cascade: Compact Nonlinear Optical Computing with Single-Layer Encoder-Decoder Co-Localization

    May 31, 2026Yuntian Wang, Alexander Chen, Md Sadman Sakib Rahman +1Diffractive Neural NetworksPhotonic Computing

    1Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

  25. Deep Binarized Photonic Reservoir Computing for Ultrafast Multimedia Signal Processing

    May 28, 2026Muhammad Waqar Iqbal, Mohamad Alassir, Nicolas Marsal +1Binary Neural NetworksReservoir Computing

    Universit´e de Lorraine, CentraleSup´elec, LMOPS Laboratory, F-57070 Metz, France · Chaire Photonique, LMOPS Laboratory, CentraleSup´elec, F-57070 Metz, France

  26. Accelerating ground state search of spatial photonic Ising machines with genetic-simulated annealing hybrid algorithm

    May 22, 2026Ze Zheng, Ruhui Ni, Jingyi Zhao +6Metaheuristic OptimizationCombinatorial Optimization

    Institute for Quantum Sensing and Information Processing, State Key Laboratory of Photonics and Communications, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China · 4Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, Anhui, China · Global College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China +2

  27. Q-PhotoNAS: Hybrid Quantum Neural Architecture Search Framework on Photonic Devices

    May 21, 2026Farah Elnakhal, Alberto Marchisio, Nouhaila Innan +2Hybrid Quantum-Classical MLHardware-Aware NAS

    Science Division, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE · eBrain Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Center for Quantum and Topological Systems, NYUAD Research Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE +1

  28. Reconfigurable Nonlinear Photonic Networks for In-Situ Learning and Memory Formation via Driven-Dissipative Dynamics

    May 19, 2026Isaac YorkeDynamical SystemsNeural Network Memorization

    Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 181/A I-43124 Parma, Italy

  29. Information Processing Capacity of Stationary Physical Systems: Theory, Data-efficient Estimation Methods, and Photonic Demonstration

    May 18, 2026Rahul Uma Ramachandran, Serge MassarPhotonic ComputingRichardson Extrapolation

    Laboratoire d’Information Quantique CP224, Universit´e libre de Bruxelles, Av. F. D. Roosevelt 50, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium

  30. Cavity-Enhanced Collective Quantum Processing with Polarization-Encoded Qubits

    May 11, 2026Kamil Wereszczyński, Józef Cyran, Adam Brzezowski +4Photonic Computing

    0000-0003-1686-472X · merQlab, Department of Computer Graphics, Vision and Digital Systems, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland · 0009-0006-5205-8986 +5