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arXiv · 2607.20810

Photo-induced currents and short-term memory for reservoir computing in a ferroelectric semiconductor

Yan Meng Chong·Atreya Majumdar·Manuel Zahn·Ingvild Hansen·Karin Everschor-Sitte·Dennis Meier
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Abstract

Physical reservoir computing represents an energy efficient approach for processing temporal signals by exploiting the intrinsic nonlinear dynamics and fading memory of a physical system. Recently, ferroelectric semiconductors moved into focus as reservoir materials motivated by their versatile electronic responses to external stimuli. Here, we explore the fundamental possibility to recognize time-varying light pulses via photo-induced currents, using the small-band-gap p-type semiconductor ErMnO$_3$ as a model system. Under white light illumination, ErMnO$_3$ exhibits non-linearly evolving photo-induced currents and controllable relaxation dynamics that naturally realize the high-dimensional projection and fading memory capabilities required for reservoir computing. The reservoir capability of ErMnO$_3$ is reflected by the improved recognition accuracy of "Past" input pulses, which increases from ~33% to ~93% after applying reservoir transformation to the input signal. The results present ferroelectric hexagonal manganites as a promising platform for photo-induced current-based reservoir computing and highlight the potential of light-driven oxide semiconductors for temporal information processing.

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Yan Meng Chong, Atreya Majumdar, Manuel Zahn, Ingvild Hansen, Karin Everschor-Sitte, Dennis Meier. 2026-07-23. Photo-induced currents and short-term memory for reservoir computing in a ferroelectric semiconductor. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20810

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