Reducing the phase sensitivity of laser-based optical reservoir computing systems

Optical implementations of reservoir computing systems are very promising because of their high processing speeds and the possibility to process several tasks in parallel. These systems can be implemented using semiconductor lasers subject to optical delayed feedback and optical injection. While the amount of the feedback/injection can be easily controlled, it is much more difficult to control the optical feedback/injection phase. We present extensive numerical investigations of the influence of the feedback/injection phases on laser-based reservoir computing systems with feedback. We show that a change in the phase can lead to a strong reduction in the reservoir computing system performance. We introduce a new readout layer design that -at least for some tasks-reduces this sensitivity to changes in the phase. It consists in optimizing the readout weights from a coherent combination of the reservoir's readout signal and its delayed version rather than only from the reservoir's readout signal as is usually done. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America