Photonic implementation of spike timing dependent plasticity with weight-dependent learning window based on VCSOA

Abstract Based on the well-known Fabry–Pérot approach, after taking into account the variation of bias current of the vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) according to the present synapse weight, we implement the optical spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP) with weight-dependent learning window in a VCSOA with double optical spike injections, and numerically investigate the corresponding weight-dependent STDP characteristics. The simulation results show that, the bias current of VCSOA has significant effect on the optical STDP curve. After introducing an adaptive variation of the bias current according to the present synapse weight, the optical weight-dependent STDP based on VCSOA can be realized. Moreover, the weight training based on the optical weight-dependent STDP can be effectively controlled by adjusting some typical external or intrinsic parameters and the excessive adjusting of synaptic weight is avoided, which can be used to balance the stability and competition among synapses and pave a way for the future large-scale energy efficient optical spiking neural networks based on the weight-dependent STDP learning mechanism.