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A UCLA team, co-led by Professor Xiangfeng Duan, has invented a transparent device that offers nonlinear operation under low-power ambient light, and combined it with a smartphone camera for glare reduction — an example of numerous applications this technology could enable.

Key takeaways

Optical computing research aims to produce energy-efficient technologies that use particles of light, called photons, in ways conceptually similar to how electronic computers use electrons.

One obstacle to realizing optical computers is that using photons for nonlinear operations —needed to process information — usually requires high-powered lasers, yet responds slowly or uses photons inefficiently.

A UCLA team has invented a transparent device that offers nonlinear operation under low-power ambient light, and combined it with a smartphone camera for glare reduction — an example of numerous applications this technology could enable.

Researchers developing the next generation of computing technology aim to bring some light to the field — literally.

Optical computing, which relies on particles of light called photons, is expected to provide alternatives to traditional electronic approaches. Such systems — or light-based components of hybrid systems that also retain electronic parts — could be faster, consume less energy and compute visual information more efficiently through simultaneous, parallel processing.

To date, optical computing has faced a limitation in achieving nonlinear responses, which means producing signals not directly proportional to the input. Nonlinearity makes universal computing applications, including artificial intelligence, possible.

Nonlinear materials and devices under development need a substantial amount of light to work. Previously, this required high-powered lasers that operate only in a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum; absorbing light over time, making processing slow; or using energy-inefficient materials that take in lots of light but preclude applications that require light efficiency or transparency.

Now, a recent collaborative study from members of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, or CNSI, has introduced a device that overcomes these hurdles.

In a major step toward optical computing for processing visual information, the CNSI investigators showed that a tiny array of transparent pixels could produce a fast, broadband, nonlinear response from low-power ambient light. The team also demonstrated an application that combines their device with a smartphone camera to reduce glare in images. The study was published in Nature Communications.

“Optical nonlinearities are far behind what we need for visual computing applications,” said co-corresponding author Aydogan Ozcan, the Volgenau Professor of Engineering Innovation in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. “We need low-power, broadband, low-loss and fast nonlinearities for optical systems to meet our visual computing needs. This work helps fill that gap.”