Showing posts with label photonics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photonics. Show all posts

Thursday, December 18, 2025

The Op Box


A major shift is happening right now, in fact it's not an exaggeration to call it a revolution. Back in the day, like back when Daniel DeFoe was writing The Plague Years, we had hydraulics and water pressure through pipes and channels, and that was the predominant technological paradigm. This started with agriculture and irrigation. Everything was explained as if it were pipes and pressure. Somewhere in between the pipes went from carrying water to carrying steam, and then air itself, and we got the internal combustion engine, right after the steam engine. That gave us the industrial revolution.

Then electricity happened. And it's still electricity. The internet is a bunch of electrical pulse patterns. Even the fiber optic cable, which carries photons, gets converted to electrical signals at the end. That's about to be over. 

Now it's light. Granted, quantum computers can use electrons, which aren't photons, but the end result is mostly photons doing the work. 

And this is a big deal, revolutionary you could call it, because it seems inevitable that this will upend the current "revolution" in artificial intelligence, which to be honest seems more about economic happenstance and less about revolutionary technology. Using GPUs for deep learning is kind of a kludge, meaning it wasn't designed this way on purpose, instead someone (Bill Dally to Andrew Ng?) said, hey I bet these GPUs could do what you're trying to do better, and so it happened. It's still electricity.

But not anymore. Now it's light, and that changes everything, and that's because the light itself computes. That's right, the light itself is the computer. ("But that doesn't even make sense." Well you're not wrong.) Still not crazy enough? Optical origami computers; which were of course discovered by accident. 


Researchers pioneer optical generative models, ushering in a new era of sustainable generative AI
Aug 2025, phys.org

I keep trying but can't seem to explain how different this is to what's currently happening in the world of computing. Then again, I was also confused when Deep Seek released their model and yet it took two weeks for the stock market to realize (true story). To be clear, this requires no internet connection and no data center. In other words, today you might call this magic. 

Optical generative models capable of producing novel images using the physics of light instead of conventional electronic computation.

The models integrate a shallow digital encoder with a free-space diffractive optical decoder, trained together as one system. Random noise is first processed into "optical generative seeds," which are projected onto a spatial light modulator and illuminated by laser light. As this light propagates through the static, pre-optimized diffractive decoder, it produces images that statistically follow the target data distribution. These models could be embedded in smart glasses, AR/VR headsets, or mobile platforms to enable real-time, on-the-go generative AI.

via UCLA Engineering Institute for Technology Advancement: Shiqi Chen et al, Optical generative models, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09446-5



Sustainable AI: Physical neural networks exploit light to train more efficiently
Sep 2025, phys.org

Physical Neural Networks - analog circuits that directly exploit the laws of physics like properties of light beams or quantum phenomena to process information.

Mathematical operations can now be performed through light interference mechanisms on silicon microchips barely a few square millimeters in size.

via Polytechnic University of Milan, École Polytechnique Fédérale, Stanford, Cambridge, and the Max Planck Institute: Ali Momeni et al, Training of physical neural networks, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09384-2


First device based on 'optical thermodynamics' can route light without switches
Oct 2025, phys.org

Optical Thermodynamics - framework captures how light behaves in nonlinear lattices using analogs of familiar thermodynamic processes such as expansion, compression, and even phase transitions. Rather than actively steering the signal, the system is engineered so that the light routes itself. "First optical device that follows the emerging framework of optical thermodynamics".

via University of Southern California: Hediyeh M. Dinani et al, Universal routing of light via optical thermodynamics, Nature Photonics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01756-4

First electronic–photonic quantum chip created in commercial foundry
Jul 2025, phys.org

Microring Resonators - a "quantum light factory"; a kind of photonic device that combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs.

via Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University, and GlobalFoundries and Silicon Valley startup Ayar Labs: Danielius Kramnik et al, Scalable feedback stabilization of quantum light sources on a CMOS chip, Nature Electronics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-025-01410-5


Photonic origami folds glass into microscopic 3D optical devices
Aug 2025, phys.org

The laser-induced technique triggers precise bending in 3-D printed ultra-thin glass sheets that are so smooth that light reflects off them without distortion.

Surprise - The new photonic origami method was discovered by chance when Carmon asked graduate student Manya Malhotra to pinpoint where an invisible laser was hitting the glass by increasing the power until the spot glowed. Instead of glowing, the glass folded - revealing a simple and unexpected way to achieve glass folding. Malhotra then became the pioneering expert in photonic origami.

Using the new photonic origami approach, the researchers were able to bend sheets of glass up to 10 microns thick into shapes ranging from a 90-degree knee to helices. They were able to do this with fine control, down to 0.1 microradians.

"This new technique brings silica photonics - using glass to guide and control light - into the third dimension."

via Tel Aviv University: Manya Malhotra et al, Photonic Origami of Silica on a Silicon Chip with Microresonators and Concave Mirrors, Optica (2025). DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.560597


Beyond electronics: Optical system performs feature extraction with unprecedented low latency
Oct 2025, phys.org

This is what I call the Op Box, I'm imagining a new type of computer, in the way the Steam Machine has (or is about to) upend the personal computer market, this Op Box will upend the very concept of a computer, and what it means to compute. 

Optical Diffraction Operators - plate-like structures that perform calculations as light propagates through them. 

This optical feature extraction engine de-serializes the data stream by sampling the input signal into multiple stable parallel branches. [For feature extraction, read recogntion, like facial recognition, etc.]

via Tsinghua University: Run Sun et al, High-speed and low-latency optical feature extraction engine based on diffraction operators, Advanced Photonics Nexus (2025). DOI: 10.1117/1.apn.4.5.056012

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Thursday, February 6, 2025

Artificial Reality Generator


New quantum random number generator achieves 2 Gbit/s speed
Jun 2024, phys.org

"The new photonic integrated circuit comprises two lasers that emit optical pulses with random phases due to quantum noise. 

PRNGs - pseudo random number generators (I think) refers to numbers produced by algorithm instead of a natural process like radio static, television fuzz, raindrops on a window, etc.

via Toshiba Europe Ltd: Davide G. Marangon et al, A fast and robust quantum random number generator with a self-contained integrated photonic randomness core, Nature Electronics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-024-01140-0.

Image credit: Beach sand - Zhang Chao Nikon Small World - 2024 [link]


The search for the random numbers that run our lives
Jul 2024, BBC News

I'm mashing up the article here, and at this point I'm really not sure why it matters, if robots can do it (looking at you Apple-rewriting-BBC-headlines) why can't I?

Back in 1997, Haahr and three of his friends had been working on gambling software – digital slot machines and blackjack games that they wanted to host online, and he knew that they would need to be able to generate reliably random numbers. If these things weren't random, the digital casino wouldn't be very fair and players could even try to beat the system by looking for predictable patterns in the games. So they went and got a really crackly radio, a messy signal shaped by lightning and electromagnetic activity in the Earth's atmosphere, converted to ones and zeroes.

Computers aren't random because they rely on internal mechanisms that are at some level predictable. So people try other things, like listening to the racket of electrical storms, capturing pictures of raindrops on glass, and playing with the tiniest particles in the known Universe. 

The radio didn't make them rich, but it's still useful, and was made available to the public at random.org, where it has been churning out random numbers ever since the San Francisco Mayor's Office uses it to draw winners for affordable housing. Or scientists use it to randomise participants in experiments, marketing firms that give away prizes to consumers choose their winners, or employers use it for drug screening to select employees randomly, and one man uses it to choose which discs from his 700-strong CD collection to put into his car each week.

Cloudflare uses a wall of colourful lava lamps. Others use raindrops falling on glass, bubbles in a fish tank, the behaviour of a kitten, sequences in DNA, clicks of radioactive decay of a banana picked up with Geiger counters, wandering mooshroom cows in Minecraft, the movement of a mouse cursor on a computer screen, the time delay between key presses on a keyboard, the noise of traffic on a computer network, tiny particles of light arriving at a detector, photons emitted by a laser pulse.

But nothing is perfectly random, and we can never prove that something is perfectly random either. We can only prove that it's not random. 

But quantum randomness - a company called Quantum Dice is developing its own quantum-random-number-generating technology. But "If a photon hits the sensor, it will ever so slightly warm it up, possibly making it more or less sensitive to future strikes".

Also - When the chips are down, no matter how exquisite a random number generator is in principle, you still have to trust that the person running it hasn't lost their scruples.

Bonus: When random number generators don't do their jobs properly, you can expect that malicious people might try to exploit them. In 2017, Wired reported on the case of a Russian hacker who allegedly got people to film the activity of slot machines at casinos. Based on the results of each play, he was able to predict the workings of the machines' internal random number generators and, therefore, determine when they would next pay out.

Post Script:
Must Read - Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, by Natasha Dow Schüll, 2012

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Saturday, January 11, 2025

We Are Not Ready for the Topological Universe


If you are like me, then you think the universe is like a big box, with all the things in it. And if you, like me, learned about Einstein and gravity and relativity in grade school, then you know that inside the big box, the space isn't exactly uniform, that it warps as it nears objects, because gravity. 

But one day soon, in grade school, people will learn that the big box isn't just warped by gravity, but that it's not a box at all. The universe might be more like a jumbled mess of intersecting toroids, bubbles and tubes. 

Anticipating future discoveries: Scientists explore nontrivial cosmic topology
May 2024, phys.org

Discussing his motivation to pursue this work, he said, "The possibility that the universe has 'interesting' topology is entirely within our Standard Model of physics but is nevertheless typically regarded as exotic."

"I have long been concerned that we would miss an extraordinary discovery about our universe by just looking the other way. In the meantime, there is growing evidence that the universe is not 'statistically isotropic,' i.e. that physics is the same in all directions. Topology is a very natural way for anisotropy to creep into our universe."

via the COMPACT collaboration of scientists including from from Case Western Reserve University: Yashar Akrami et al, Promise of Future Searches for Cosmic Topology, Physical Review Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.171501

Image credit: The above image is the "first topological frequency comb", and is (ostensibly) a photograph taken by Emily Edwards for the University of Maryland and National Institute of Standards and Technology Joint Quantum Institute, where she is recognized for her ability to communicate with the public about quantum science. (I say the image is ostensibly a photograph, because it just looks way too good to be real, and part of me thinks it's just not properly cited. [link]


New measurements of gravitational anomaly at low acceleration favor modified gravity, researcher claims
Sep 2024, phys.org

When Kuhn talked about revolutions, this is what he was talking about. I'm too young to have felt the excitement upon discovering that E equals MC2, or that gravity affects time. But now I see. 

They keep finding it between binary stars - It's the breakdown of Newtonian gravity at low acceleration, and it's called modified Newtonian dynamics, or MoND, or Milgromian dynamics, because it was introduced 40 years ago by Mordehai (Moti) Milgrom.

While these consistent results are arresting, unlimited reproductions and confirmations are needed for the reported gravitational anomaly to become a true scientific fact. Also, the reported gravitational anomaly will have to be better characterized continually to provide useful constraints on theories.

via Sejong University: Kyu-Hyun Chae, Measurements of the Low-acceleration Gravitational Anomaly from the Normalized Velocity Profile of Gaia Wide Binary Stars and Statistical Testing of Newtonian and Milgromian Theories, The Astrophysical Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad61e9

Also: Hernandez et al, A critical review of recent Gaia wide binary gravity tests, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2024). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae1823


Observational study supports century-old theory that challenges the Big Bang
Sep 2024, phys.org

Big Bang theory suggests the universe started to expand 13.8 billion years ago. At the same time, preeminent astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposed that galaxies that were more distant from Earth did not really move faster, but the red shift was because the light photons lose their energy as they travel through space. And it's called the Tired Light theory.

"The tired light theory was largely neglected, as astronomers adopted the Big Bang theory as the consensus model of the universe," Shamir said. "But the confidence of some astronomers in the Big Bang theory started to weaken when the powerful James Webb Space Telescope saw first light.

via Kansas State University: Lior Shamir, An Empirical Consistent Redshift Bias: A Possible Direct Observation of Zwicky's TL Theory, Particles (2024). DOI: 10.3390/particles7030041


Post Script:
New photonic chip spawns nested topological frequency comb
Jun 2024, phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-photonic-chip-spawns-topological-frequency.html

The First Topological Frequency Comb - shines with evenly spaced pristine frequency spikes, relies on a small silicon nitride chip patterned with hundreds of microscopic rings arranged in a two-dimensional grid; a complex pattern of interference takes input laser light and circulates it around the edge of the chip while the material of the chip itself splits it up into many frequencies.

via the University of Maryland and National Institute of Standards and Technology Joint Quantum Institute: Christopher J. Flower et al, Observation of topological frequency combs, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.ado0053

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Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Everything Is A Computer If You Try Hard Enough


You walk into a room, and it's empty, but you enter, and without hesitation, you sit down into mid air, and before you land, a chair materializes itself to catch you. The actual matter, the particles that make up the chair, have been engineered to become chairs. They have "chair" written not into their DNA, but into their fundamental physics. They have no power source because they take their energy from light waves, sound waves, vibrations, even gradients like in between high temperatures and lows, or saltwater and fresh, or whatever that means, since it could be an information gradient (could it?). They have no battery because they don't use more than they need in real time. Every particle of this special form of matter is a computer, with wireless communication, with sensors, all of it built into the physics of the particles themselves. It will know you're in the room, who you are and what you want. And that's why all you have to do is want to sit, and the chair materializes. It's still too hard to explain what it means when everything is a computer, but here is an introduction:  

Photonic chip that 'fits together like Lego' opens door to semiconductor industry
Dec 2023, phys.org

Chiplets - The chip is built using an emerging technology in silicon photonics that allows the integration of diverse systems on semiconductors less than 5 millimeters wide; it's like fitting together Lego building blocks, where new materials are integrated through advanced packaging of components, using electronic "chiplets."

via University of Sydney Nano Institute:  Matthew Garrett et al, Integrated microwave photonic notch filter using a heterogeneously integrated Brillouin and active-silicon photonic circuit, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43404-x

Unexpected AI fingers image credit: AI Art - AI Fingers at Work on a Circuitboard - 2023


Study suggests that physical processes can have hidden neural network-like abilities
Jan 2024, phys.org

Natural molecular processes can do complex calculations that rival a simple neural network. On the face of it, the initial steps in the act of freezing - called 'nucleation' in physics - do not resemble 'thinking'. But the new study shows that the act of freezing can "recognize" subtly different chemical combinations - e.g., the smell of oatmeal raisin cookies versus chocolate chip - and build different molecular structures in response.

The work points at a new view of computation that does not involve designing circuits, but rather designing what physicists call a phase diagram. For example, for water, a phase diagram might describe the temperature and pressure conditions in which liquid water will freeze or boil, which are 'muscle'-like material properties. But this work shows that the phase diagram can also encode 'thinking' in addition to 'doing,' when scaled up to complex systems with many different kinds of components.

via University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology, and Maynooth University: Constantine Glen Evans et al, Pattern recognition in the nucleation kinetics of non-equilibrium self-assembly, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06890-z

 
International research team develops new hardware for neuromorphic computing
Feb 2024, phys.org

In the eye, the visual information is pre-processed by hundreds of millions of the retina's photoreceptors and converted into electrical signals that are transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain. This process greatly reduces the amount of data processed in the brain by the visual cortex.

(The nose is far, far crazier in what it does, by the way)

Inspired by eyesight, this on-chip phonon-magnon reservoir for neuromorphic computing maps input signals into a multidimensional reservoir space. The reservoir is made of acoustic waves (phonons) and spin waves (magnons), and is not trained but only expedites recognition by a simplified artificial neural network, resulting in enormous reduction of computational resources and training time.

(Wait until they get inspired by the nose)

via Technische Universität Dortmund, Loughborough University, V. E. Lashkaryov Institute of Semiconductor Physics in Kyiv, University of Nottingham: Dmytro D. Yaremkevich et al, On-chip phonon-magnon reservoir for neuromorphic computing, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43891-y


A low-cost system to collect EEG measurements during VR experiences
Feb 2024, phys.org

Everything gets it's own chip, just like this

NeuroVista, the new system proposed by the researchers, utilizes KS1092, a cost-effective biological potential measurement chip. The prototype of the device created by the researchers is comprised of this chip, along with a set of electrodes, and a lithium battery.

via South China University of Technology: Zhiyuan Yu et al, A low-cost, wireless, 4-channel EEG measurement system used in virtual reality environments, HardwareX (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00507.
 

Giant leap toward neuromorphic devices: High-performance spin-wave reservoir computing
Mar 2024, phys.org

It's a high-performance spin wave reservoir computing that uses spintronics. It works with a randomly generated network called the "reservoir" which enables the memorization of past input information and its nonlinear transformation, allowing physical systems to perform tasks for sequential data.

via Tohoku University Advanced Institute for Materials Research: Satoshi Iihama et al, Universal scaling between wave speed and size enables nanoscale high-performance reservoir computing based on propagating spin-waves, npj Spintronics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44306-024-00008-5

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