Metasurface-integrated VCSEL designed for polarization control in optical Ising machines
Abstract
The orthogonal polarization states of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be used to describe candidate solutions to the Ising Hamiltonian, which is useful for solving quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems. However, the natural anisotropy of VCSELs tends to overly favor one polarization state, which impedes the system from working as desired. In this work, we have designed and fabricated a metasurface, which may lead to a VCSEL with reduced undesired anisotropy. By changing the geometric size of nano-structures in the metasurface, the polarization state of the output light can be altered. Based on the injection-locking theory and spin-flip model, we numerically show that VCSELs with lowered anisotropy are more easily affected by the injection locking needed in Ising systems. Additionally, we numerically study the evolution of a 3-bit VCSEL-based Ising system and verify that the computational accuracy of the photonic Ising machine can be improved to more than twice that of its counterpart with higher anisotropy.
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BibTeX
@misc{chen2026metasurfaceintegrated,
title = {{Metasurface-integrated VCSEL designed for polarization control in optical Ising machines}},
author = {Wenjie Chen and Zifeng Yuan and Hong-Lin Lin and Luo Qi and Jiaru Chu and Aaron Danner and Yuhang Chen},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21331},
eprint = {2609.21331},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21331},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Metasurface-integrated VCSEL designed for polarization control in optical Ising machines
AU - Wenjie Chen
AU - Zifeng Yuan
AU - Hong-Lin Lin
AU - Luo Qi
AU - Jiaru Chu
AU - Aaron Danner
AU - Yuhang Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21331
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21331
AB - The orthogonal polarization states of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be used to describe candidate solutions to the Ising Hamiltonian, which is useful for solving quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems. However, the natural anisotropy of VCSELs tends to overly favor one polarization state, which impedes the system from working as desired. In this work, we have designed and fabricated a metasurface, which may lead to a VCSEL with reduced undesired anisotropy. By changing the geometric size of nano-structures in the metasurface, the polarization state of the output light can be altered. Based on the injection-locking theory and spin-flip model, we numerically show that VCSELs with lowered anisotropy are more easily affected by the injection locking needed in Ising systems. Additionally, we numerically study the evolution of a 3-bit VCSEL-based Ising system and verify that the computational accuracy of the photonic Ising machine can be improved to more than twice that of its counterpart with higher anisotropy.
ER -