Exploiting a Distributed Nonlinearity in a Photonic Coherent Fiber-Based Reservoir Computer

In this work we use the reservoir computing framework to exploit the natural transient dynamics of a nonlinear photonic system, allowing to perform useful computation. Photonic reservoir implementations are targeting simple reservoir architectures to push the boundaries of state-of-the-art optical computing systems [1] . It is not uncommon for opto-electronic conversion equipment in the input and output layers of such systems to boost the overall system performance beyond the merits of the photonic reservoir itself. As the photonic computing research community shift its target to all-optical computing systems, such non-linearities can no longer be relied on. An in-depth investigation into reliable optical nonlinearities is therefore warranted. In this work, we use a delay-based reservoir architecture based on a coherently driven passive fiber-ring cavity following [2] , illustrated in Fig. 1a , and we demonstrate the exploitation of the optical Kerr nonlinearity, present throughout the reservoirs spatial extent.