Analog photonic solutions offer unique opportunities to address complex computational tasks with unprecedented performance in terms of energy dissipation and speeds, overcoming current limitations of modern computing architectures based on electron flows and digital approaches. The lack of modularization and lumped element reconfigurability in photonics has prevented the transition to an all-optical analog computing platform. Here, we explore a nanophotonic platform based on epsilon-near-zero materials capable of solving in the analog domain partial differential equations (PDE). Wavelength stretching in zero-index media enables highly nonlocal interactions within the board based on the conduction of electric displacement, which can be monitored to extract the solution of a broad class of PDE problems. By exploiting control of deposition technique through process parameters, we demonstrate the possibility of implementing the proposed nano-optic processor using CMOS-compatible indium-tin-oxide, whose optical properties can be tuned by carrier injection to obtain programmability at high speeds and low energy requirements. Our nano-optical analog processor can be integrated at chip-scale, processing arbitrary inputs at the speed of light.

中文翻译：

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使用 Metatronic 电路进行模拟计算

模拟光子解决方案为解决复杂的计算任务提供了独特的机会，在能量耗散和速度方面具有前所未有的性能，克服了基于电子流和数字方法的现代计算架构的当前限制。光子学中缺乏模块化和集总元件可重构性阻碍了向全光模拟计算平台的过渡。在这里，我们探索了一个基于 epsilon-near-zero 材料的纳米光子平台，能够在模拟域偏微分方程 (PDE) 中求解。零折射率介质中的波长拉伸基于电位移的传导实现了电路板内的高度非局部相互作用，可以对其进行监测以提取广泛类别的 PDE 问题的解决方案。通过利用工艺参数控制沉积技术，我们证明了使用与 CMOS 兼容的氧化铟锡来实现所提出的纳米光学处理器的可能性，其光学特性可以通过载流子注入进行调整以获得高速和低能量的可编程性要求。我们的纳米光学模拟处理器可以芯片级集成，以光速处理任意输入。