Harnessing exciton-polaritons for digital computing, neuromorphic computing, and optimization [Invited]

Abstract

Polaritons are quasiparticles resulting from the strong quantum coupling of light and matter. Peculiar properties of polaritons are a mixture of physics usually restricted to one of these realms, making them interesting for study not only from the fundamental point of view but also for applications. In recent years, many studies have been devoted to the potential use of exciton-polaritons for computing. Very recently, it has been shown experimentally that they can be harnessed not only for digital computing but also for optical neural networks and for optimization related to hard computational problems. Here, we provide a brief review of recent studies and the most important results in this area. We focus our attention, in particular, on the emerging concepts of non-von-Neumann computing schemes and their realizations in exciton-polariton systems.