Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora

The joint UK-EU funding is connected to our EIC-Pathfinder project QRC-4-ESP @qrc-4-esp.bsky.social, for more details see www.qrc-4-esp.eu

Check out the paper for details, we'd love your thoughts and feedback! This research is funded by EPSRC (QTCDF EP/W028344/1), the European Union/EIC (Grant Agreement no. 101129663), and UKRI Horizon Guarantee Scheme (Grant No. 10108296) @ukri.org @ec.europa.eu

Excitingly, this is a simple modification (probably just a few lines of code) for existing platforms. There are also key connections with ongoing research in the quantum version of these systems.

Why does this matter? Enhanced expressivity means our reservoir can solve more complex nonlinear tasks without changing any property of the scattering media, and just by setting the right phase wrapping factor.

The secret: random spectral feature engineering. By allowing phase wrapping, the reservoir generates richer features through Random Fourier features interacting nonlinearly (see Rahimi & Rech's 2007 seminal paper papers.nips.cc/paper_files/... and following works (e.g., arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07310).

This might seem counterintuitive—aren't we losing information? Surprisingly, it boosts expressivity. We show clear improvements on benchmark tasks such as nonlinear time-series prediction and classification, outperforming conventional encoding strategies that don’t work within [0, 2\pi).

This is done to avoid repetition in the outputs corresponding to different data. We instead deliberately stretch the encoding domain, enabling inputs to "wrap" around multiple times in the optical phase.

In this work, we propose a new and counterintuitive approach: non-bijective phase encoding. What does it mean? Typically, in these systems, the data is encoded in the standard period [0, 2\pi).

Photonic Reservoir Computing is a powerful approach for unconventional computing, particularly in systems combining phase modulators and scattering media. Scattering-based reservoirs generally encode the data in the phase of the optical waves.

This theoretical project is the result of lengthy discussions (and long nocturnal writing sessions) among Gerard McCaul, Giulia Marcucci @giuliasnlworld.bsky.social , CEO of LumiAIres Ltd, and us at the EPicX (especially @girishtripathy.bsky.social‬).

Excited to share our new paper from the EPicX@Loughborough just posted on ArXiv:
"Unwrapping photonic reservoirs: enhanced expressivity via random Fourier encoding over stretched domains "
🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2506.01410

@epicxphoton.bsky.social @lborouniversity.bsky.social

Adiabatic Energetic Annealing via Dual Single-Pixel Detection in an Optical Nonlinear Ising Machine Photonic Ising machines are leading key advancements in solving large combinatorial problems, leveraging large-scale platforms with parallel computing capabilities. A well-known bottleneck of complex ...

Exciting news from EPicX! 💡 Our new ACS Photonics paper shows how our Photonic Ising machine with single-pixel detection can better solve complex problems through adiabatic energetic annealing. Read more (open access): pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Quantum-enhanced time-domain spectroscopy Two-mode squeezed states allow for a twofold noise reduction in time-resolved electric field sensing.

Excited to share our recent work on quantum-enhanced time-domain spectroscopy, in partnership with Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde, Loughborough and Insubria showing 2x sensitivity enhancement!

@epicxphoton.bsky.social @comolakephotonics.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

A great opportunity to undertake a PhD in a cutting-edge field!

book cover and first page of the preface

The third edition of my textbook, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, was published today. You can preview the first 68 pages on Google Books, or take a look at the preface below to see what's new. The main new thing is a chapter on the Kuramoto model! Hope you enjoy it.