Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Neuromorphic photonic computation with multimode cavity QED

Benjamin Lev, Stanford University

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Photons in a multimode optical cavity can be used to mediate tailored interactions between atoms confined in the cavity. For atoms possessing multiple internal (i.e., "spin") states, the spin-spin interactions mediated by the cavity are analogous in structure to the RKKY interaction between localized spins in metals. Thus, it is possible to use spinful atoms in cavities to realize models of frustrated and/or disordered spin systems, including models that can be mapped on to the Hopfield neural network model and related models of associative memory. We explain how this realization of associative memory arises and discuss ways in which the properties of these models can be probed in this quantum optical setting.