All-optical implementation of a self-organizing map: a preliminary approach

Optically addressed ferroelectric liquid-crystal devices present certain characteristics that make them attractive for all-optical implementations of neural architectures. This is particularly true for the implementation of analog self-organizing systems such as Kohonen's self-organizing map. The optical architecture proposed here is based on the principle of a resonator memory. The main novelty lies in the two-dimensional, continuous, binary information encoding and organization. Basic operations such as neural decision, weight updating, and information spatial ordering are investigated. The principle of a learning procedure close to the Hebbian rule is discussed.