Towards a photonic spiking neuron: excitability in a silicon-on-insulator microring.
Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Martin Fiers, Kristof Vandoorne, Bendix Schneider, Joni Dambre, Peter Bienstman · IEICE Proceeding Series · 2014
For certain input power and wavelength settings, high Q-factor silicon-on-insulator rings self-pulsate. Thereby, they seem suited to emulate the behaviour of spiking neurons on a photonic chip. To gain insight in the possible excitation mechanisms a phase-plane analysis is needed. In this paper, we develop the theory needed to construct such phase portraits for a coupled mode theory description of the microring. For some wavelengths, when changing the input power, the microring undergoes a subcritical Andronov-Hopf bifurcation at the self-pulsation onset. As a consequence the system is class II excitable.