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Light Science & Applications

A versatile large-scale coherent Ising machine from microwave to visible and telecom wavelength bands

Haoran Zhang, Jian Li, Haotao Zhu

Published Feb 24, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A versatile coherent Ising machine platform based on degenerate optical parametric oscillators has emerged as a powerful approach for solving NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems across diverse applications. Recent work demonstrated breakthroughs using femtosecond laser pumping, achieving a 55% success rate for 100-vertex Max-Cut problems with stable performance maintained for over 8 h. This versatile platform supports fully connected problem mapping and has been successfully validated across multiple domains including molecular docking and credit scoring, substantiating the practical potential of optical approaches for large-scale optimization and paving the way for broad integration into industrial applications.

DOI
10.1038/s41377-026-02225-5

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A versatile coherent Ising machine platform based on degenerate optical parametric oscillators has emerged as a powerful approach for solving NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems across diverse applications. Recent work demonstrated breakthroughs using femtosecond laser pumping, achieving a 55% success rate for 100-vertex Max-Cut problems with stable performance maintained for over 8 h. This versatile platform supports fully connected problem mapping and has been successfully validated across multiple domains including molecular docking and credit scoring, substantiating the practical potential of optical approaches for large-scale optimization and paving the way for broad integration into industrial applications.
Coherent Ising machines (CIMs) have emerged as a hybrid form of quantum computing devices designed to solve NP-complete problems, offering an exciting opportunity for discovering optimal solutions. Despite challenges such as susceptibility to noise-induced local minima, we achieved notable advantages in improving the computational accuracy and stability of CIMs. We conducted a successful experimental demonstration of CIM via femtosecond laser pumping that integrates optimization strategies across optical and structural dimensions, resulting in significant performance enhancements. The results are particularly promising. An average success rate of 55% was achieved to identify optimal solutions within a Möbius Ladder graph comprising 100 vertices. Compared with other alternatives, the femtosecond pulse results in significantly higher peak power, leading to more pronounced quantum effects and lower pump power in optical fiber-based CIMs. In addition, we have maintained an impressive success rate for a continuous period of 8 hours, emphasizing the practical applicability of CIMs in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, our research extends to the application of these principles in practical applications such as molecular docking and credit scoring. The results presented substantiate the theoretical promise of CIMs, paving the way for their integration into large-scale practical applications.
Many tasks in our modern life, such as planning an efficient travel, image processing and optimizing integrated circuit design, are modeled as complex combinatorial optimization problems with binary variables. Such problems can be mapped to finding a ground state of the Ising Hamiltonian, thus various physical systems have been studied to emulate and solve this Ising problem. Recently, networks of mutually injected optical oscillators, called coherent Ising machines, have been developed as promising solvers for the problem, benefiting from programmability, scalability and room temperature operation. Here, we report a 16-bit coherent Ising machine based on a network of time-division-multiplexed femtosecond degenerate optical parametric oscillators. The system experimentally gives more than 99.6% of success rates for one-dimensional Ising ring and nondeterministic polynomial-time (NP) hard instances. The experimental and numerical results indicate that gradual pumping of the network combined with multiple spectral and temporal modes of the femtosecond pulses can improve the computational performance of the Ising machine, offering a new path for tackling larger and more complex instances.
We report a coherent Ising machine (CIM), which is a network of degenerate optical parametric oscillators for simulating the Ising model. Using a long-distance fiber cavity that includes a telecom-band phase sensitive amplifier, we generated large number of degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) pulses multiplexed in time domain, which represent the Ising spins. By using a measurement and feedback scheme, we could implement all-to-all coupling among 2048 DOPOs. We experimentally confirmed that the CIM could find solutions to maximum cut problems for graphs with as many as 2000 nodes.
Coherent Ising Machines (CIMs) have emerged as a hybrid form of quantum computing devices designed to solve NP-complete problems, offering an exciting opportunity for discovering optimal solutions. Despite challenges such as susceptibility to noise-induced local minima, we achieved notable advantages in improving the computational accuracy and stability of CIMs. We conducted a successful experimental demonstration of CIM via femto-second laser pumping that integrates optimization strategies across optical and structural dimensions, resulting in significant performance enhancements. The results are particularly promising. An average success rate of 55% was achieved to identify optimal solutions within a Mobius Ladder graph comprising 100 vertices. Compared with other alternatives, the femto-second pulse results in significantly higher peak power, leading to more pronounced quantum effects and lower pump power in optical fiber based CIMs. In addition, we have maintained an impressive success rate for a continuous period of 8 hours, emphasizing the practical applicability of CIMs in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, our research extends to the application of these principles in practical applications such as molecular docking and credit scoring. The results presented substantiate the theoretical promise of CIMs, paving the way for their integration into large-scale practical applications.
Coherent Ising machines (CIMs) are increasingly anticipated as a new computer that can solve combinatorial optimization problems. CIMs use degenerate optical parametric oscillator pulses as artificial spins. We constructed a 100,512-spin coherent Ising machine, the world's largest. Our CIM can find good solutions to maximum cut problems of 100,000-node graphs ~1000 times faster than simulated annealing. Furthermore, it provides both very good scores and a broad distribution when we operate it near the phase transition point.