soen learning trail

Interactive notes, figures, and demos for superconducting optoelectronic networks. The sequence runs from Josephson-device intuition to dendrites, soma dynamics, temporal binding, associative memory, and hardware-aware energy comparisons.

read the trail

A path through the core ideas, ordered from device physics to systems-level behavior.

• device intuition Josephson Junction: Washboard and Pendulum

  A first-principles picture of phase, bias current, critical current, and voltage.

• dendrite dynamics SOEN Leaky Integrator Dendrite

  A SQUID source fills an integration loop, and the loop leaks with a tunable time constant.

• spiking nonlinearity SOEN Soma: Threshold and Refractory Feedback

  Dendritic signal crosses a threshold, emits a spike, and recovers through a refractory loop.

• full stack Build a Full SOEN Neuron

  Step through synapses, dendrites, soma, optical fan-out, XOR training, Hopfield recall, and power.

• temporal binding Coincidence and Sequence Detection

  Watch two flux pulses sum through downstream dynamics and see how delay becomes a readout.

• SSM bridge Loops as States

  Connect flux-loop dynamics to state-space models and frequency-selective memory.

• memory Hopfield Associative Memory

  Corrupt a stored pattern, run recall, and watch the network descend an energy landscape.

• memory theory Associative Memory Deep Dive

  Capacity, basins, superconducting hardware mapping, and modern dense Hopfield attention.

• local learning Equilibrium Propagation

  Train a tiny network by contrasting a free relaxation with a weakly nudged relaxation.

• energy model SOEN vs GPU: Intelligence per Watt

  Explore synaptic operations per second under cryogenic cooling and wall-plug power budgets.

demos

Static experiment exports with playable audio, spectrograms, SOEN traces, confidence curves, and benchmark summaries.

• 87.5% held-out order task Temporal Command Binder

  Playable Speech Commands streams showing order-sensitive SOEN trace readouts.

• coincidence readout Clean Temporal Order Binder

  The clean up/go versus go/up task with waveform, spectrogram, traces, and confidence curves.

• challenge result Temporal Distractor Challenge

  A harder spoken distractor setting that documents a useful current limitation.

• summary dashboard Speech Binding Benchmark

  A compact benchmark dashboard comparing clean and distractor order conditions.

• generated audio Conditional Audio Generator

  SOEN-conditioned hidden trajectories decoded into prototype generated speech-like audio.

notes and slides

Longer-form documents for the technical arguments behind the demos.

• PDF SOEN Lecture Notes

  Core phenomenological notes for superconducting optoelectronic neurons.

• PDF SOEN Associative Memory Notes

  Hopfield-style memory, energy descent, and capacity framed for SOEN systems.

• PDF SOEN to State Space Models

  A note connecting superconducting loop dynamics to SSM-style computation.

• PDF SOEN Slides

  Slide deck for the overall educational sequence.

figures

Selected visual artifacts for quick inspection while reading the notes.

• PNG Digit Classification Ablation

  Ablation behavior for the digit classifier.

• PNG MNIST Multiclass Overview

  Visual summary for the MNIST multiclass run.

• PNG Dendrite/Frequency Response

  State traces and fitted dynamics.

• PNG Temporal Binding Trace

  A trace-level view of temporal binding.

• PNG Tau Bank / SSM Bridge

  A compact figure for loop banks and timescales.

• PNG Energy / Memory Landscape

  Memory and energy-landscape visual intuition.

• PDF Example Reconstruction

  PDF figure for reconstruction behavior.

• PDF Task Hardware Mapping

  PDF figure mapping task logic onto hardware.