Analog Photonics Computing for Information Processing, Inference, and Optimization

This review presents an overview of the current state‐of‐the‐art in photonics computing, which leverages photons, photons coupled with matter, and optics‐related technologies for effective and efficient computational purposes. It covers the history and development of photonics computing and modern analogue computing platforms and architectures, focusing on optimization tasks and neural network implementations. The authors examine special‐purpose optimizers, mathematical descriptions of photonics optimizers, and their various interconnections. Disparate applications are discussed, including direct encoding, logistics, finance, phase retrieval, machine learning, neural networks, probabilistic graphical models, and image processing, among many others. The main directions of technological advancement and associated challenges in photonics computing are explored, along with an assessment of its efficiency. Finally, the paper discusses prospects and the field of optical quantum computing, providing insights into the potential applications of this technology.