Photonic neural networks with spatiotemporal chaos in multimode fibers

Optical computing has gained significant attention as a potential solution to the growing computational demands of machine learning, particularly for tasks requiring large-scale data processing and high energy efficiency. Optical systems offer promising alternatives to digital neural networks by exploiting light's parallelism. This study explores a photonic neural network design using spatiotemporal chaos within grad-ed-index multimode fibers to improve machine learning performance. Through numerical simulations and experiments, we show that chaotic light propagation in multimode fibers enhances data classification accu-racy across domains, including biomedical imaging, fashion, and satellite geospatial analysis. This chaotic optical approach enables high-dimensional transformations, amplifying data separability and differentiation for greater accuracy. Fine-tuning parameters such as pulse peak power optimizes the reservoir's chaotic properties, highlighting the need for careful calibration. These findings underscore the potential of chaos-based nonlinear photonic neural networks to advance optical computing in machine learning, paving the way for efficient, scalable architectures.