Spiking dynamics and synchronization properties of optical neurons based on VCSEL-SAs

We systematically investigate the spiking dynamics of optical neurons consisting of vertical-cavity surface emitting laser with an embedding saturable absorber (VCESL-SA) and the synchronization properties of coupled networks. The amplitude of spikes and the inter-spike interval of the spiking neurons are mainly considered. We also observe cluster synchronization in regular small networks that can be predicted via the adjacent matrix and further investigate the coherence in large-scale networks (up to a thousand nodes) with 4 typical typologies. Besides, the effect of a biologically observed autapse (which acts as a delayed self-feedback of an optical neuron) on the synchronization of network is taken into account. This work provides basic investigations of the spiking dynamics and synchronization properties in networks of coupled optical neurons in comparison of the fundamental researches based on biological neurons and neuron models, which may be helpful in potential implementations of optical neural networks that mimic the biological brains.