“Multiplying” Light Signals Could be Key to Ultra-Powerful Optical Computers

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"Multiplying" Light Signals Could Be Key to Ultra-Powerful Optical Computers:

An important class of challenging computational problems, with applications in graph theory, neural networks, artificial intelligence, and error-correcting codes can be solved by multiplying light signals, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia.

In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, they propose a new type of computation that could revolutionize analog computing by dramatically reducing the number of light signals needed while simplifying the search for the best mathematical solutions, allowing for ultra-fast optical computers.

[...] Professor Natalia Berloff from Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and PhD student Nikita Stroev from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have found that optical systems can combine light by multiplying the wave functions describing the light waves instead of adding them and may represent a different type of connections between the light waves.

They illustrated this phenomenon with quasi-particles called polaritons - which are half-light and half-matter - while extending the idea to a larger class of optical systems such as light pulses in a fiber. Tiny pulses or blobs of coherent, superfast-moving polaritons can be created in space and overlap with one another in a nonlinear way, due to the matter component of polaritons.

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