Breakthrough in vectorial optics: next-generation photonic computing

The rapid growth of AI and the decline of Moore’s law have recently motivated research into photonic computing as a high-bandwidth, low-power strategy to accelerate digital electronics. However, many modern-day photonic computing strategies are analogue, making them susceptible to noise and intrinsically difficult to scale. 

Researchers in Oxford’s Vectorial Optics and Photonics group have recently made a major breakthrough by using ideas from topology to solve long-standing problems in the field. They did this by creating special, high-dimensional patterns of polarised light (called optical skyrmions) that allow them to assign digital information to what is normally a continuous, analogue light field. Using these polarisation patterns, they show that it’s possible to perform reliable, integer-based calculations. The calculations happen through simple optical components that act like “light adders,” carrying out mathematical operations directly through light without needing any extra energy.

Professor Chao He, who leads the Vectorial Optics and Photonics group, says, “This achievement not only represents a milestone for our group but also marks the first real-world killer application of optical skyrmions - until now, research into optical skyrmions has been largely fundamental. This work essentially opens up a new landscape, providing a next-generation platform for photonic computing, optical communication, optical interconnects, and beyond.”

The work titled ‘Perturbation-resilient integer arithmetic using optical skyrmions’ was recently published in Nature Photonics. The first author is undergraduate engineering student Mr An Aloysius (Lou) Wang, and the last author is Professor Chao He, leader of the VOP group. Notably, the entire team comprises early-career researchers, with an average age of under 27.

"…chips based on this technology could offer a groundbreaking route for photonic computing and beyond, and may well constitute a new paradigm capable of meeting the increasingly pressing demands for computational power…"

Reviewer of the paper

Professor He adds, “We are incredibly excited and honoured that our work has been acknowledged by leading experts in the field and published in such a world-class optics journal. We are endlessly grateful to all in the Department - across its academic, administrative, technical divisions - for its unwavering support of our young team’s explorations and bold ideas. This project originally started as a purely curiosity-driven study, without any application in mind. It all came from the joy of discovery”.

"…generally, every new topological number proposed tends to have a profound impact across disciplines. I look forward to seeing the generalized skyrmion number show similar potential and influence in multiple fields."

Reviewer of the paper

This is not the only work recently led by the VOP group. Their research focusing on optical techniques for vectorial beam manipulation - including structured light, structured matter, adaptive optics, and polarisation sensing - with applications in biomedical diagnosis and archaeological sample differentiation, has also been published recently in Nature Communications, Science Advances, Light: Science & Applications, and other leading journals.

“Finally,” Professor He adds, “I’d like to end with a little pun from our homepage: it features a ship sailing in the ocean, symbolizing VOP as a ship, with various elements of vectorial optics beneath the waves. This image reflects our team’s ongoing journey to the frontiers of optical research, much like a ship navigating through turbulent seas. There’s also a wordplay here: light itself is a kind of wave, just like the unpredictable ocean waves that a ship must navigate through. We’ll keep working hard, riding the waves, to advance vectorial optics technology and make meaningful contributions to society.”