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We introduce an electro-optic hardware platform for nonlinear activation functions in optical neural networks. The optical-to-optical nonlinearity operates by converting a small portion of the input optical signal into an analog electric…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-08-09 Ian A. D. Williamson , Tyler W. Hughes , Momchil Minkov , Ben Bartlett , Sunil Pai , Shanhui Fan

Element-wise activation functions play a critical role in deep neural networks via affecting the expressivity power and the learning dynamics. Learning-based activation functions have recently gained increasing attention and success. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-05 Dengsheng Chen , Jun Li , Kai Xu

We analyze a simple one-hidden-layer neural network with ReLU activation functions and fixed biases, with one-dimensional input and output. We study both continuous and discrete versions of the model, and we rigorously prove the convergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Fabricio Macià , Shu Nakamura

The choice of activation function can have a large effect on the performance of a neural network. While there have been some attempts to hand-engineer novel activation functions, the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) remains the most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-14 Garrett Bingham , William Macke , Risto Miikkulainen

Activation function is a pivotal component of deep learning, facilitating the extraction of intricate data patterns. While classical activation functions like ReLU and its variants are extensively utilized, their static nature and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-04 Barathi Subramanian , Rathinaraja Jeyaraj , Rakhmonov Akhrorjon Akhmadjon Ugli

All-optical neural networks (AONNs) promise transformative gains in speed and energy efficiency for artificial intelligence (AI) by leveraging the intrinsic parallelism and wave nature of light. However, their scalability has been…

Optics · Physics 2025-12-09 Ruben Canora , Xinzhe Xu , Ziqi Niu , Hadiseh Alaeian , Shengwang Du

Neural networks are universal function approximators which are known to generalize well despite being dramatically overparameterized. We study this phenomenon from the point of view of the spectral bias of neural networks. Our contributions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-07 Qingguo Hong , Jonathan W. Siegel , Qinyang Tan , Jinchao Xu

Well-known activation functions like ReLU or Leaky ReLU are non-differentiable at the origin. Over the years, many smooth approximations of ReLU have been proposed using various smoothing techniques. We propose new smooth approximations of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-28 Koushik Biswas , Sandeep Kumar , Shilpak Banerjee , Ashish Kumar Pandey

In this paper we investigate the performance of different types of rectified activation functions in convolutional neural network: standard rectified linear unit (ReLU), leaky rectified linear unit (Leaky ReLU), parametric rectified linear…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-30 Bing Xu , Naiyan Wang , Tianqi Chen , Mu Li

This paper explores the topological signatures of ReLU neural network activation patterns. We consider feedforward neural networks with ReLU activation functions and analyze the polytope decomposition of the feature space induced by the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Vicente Bosca , Tatum Rask , Sunia Tanweer , Andrew R. Tawfeek , Branden Stone

Rectified linear unit (ReLU) is a widely used activation function for deep convolutional neural networks. However, because of the zero-hard rectification, ReLU networks miss the benefits from negative values. In this paper, we propose a…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2018-01-30 Suo Qiu , Xiangmin Xu , Bolun Cai

We present a novel approach to implementing all-optical Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation functions using compact doubly-resonant cavities with dimensions of approximately $10\,\mu\mathrm{m}$. Our design leverages $\chi^{(2)}$…

Optics · Physics 2025-04-29 Amirreza Ahmadnejad , Mohmmad Mehrdad Asadi , Somayyeh Koohi

The activation function is at the heart of a deep neural networks nonlinearity; the choice of the function has great impact on the success of training. Currently, many practitioners prefer the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) due to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Jordan Inturrisi , Sui Yang Khoo , Abbas Kouzani , Riccardo Pagliarella

Researchers have proposed various activation functions. These activation functions help the deep network to learn non-linear behavior with a significant effect on training dynamics and task performance. The performance of these activations…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-01-07 Pravendra Singh , Munender Varshney , Vinay P. Namboodiri

The training process of neural networks usually optimize weights and bias parameters of linear transformations, while nonlinear activation functions are pre-specified and fixed. This work develops a systematic approach to constructing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Zhengqi Liu , Shuhao Cao , Yuwen Li , Ludmil Zikatanov

Photonic neural networks have demonstrated their potential over the past decades, but have not yet reached the full extent of their capabilities. One reason for this lies in an essential component - the nonlinear activation function, which…

Optics · Physics 2025-02-26 Grigorii Slinkov , Steven Becker , Dirk Englund , Birgit Stiller

Large Language Models (LLMs) with billions of parameters have drastically transformed AI applications. However, their demanding computation during inference has raised significant challenges for deployment on resource-constrained devices.…

Activation functions have been shown to affect the performance of deep neural networks significantly. While the Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) remains the dominant choice in practice, the optimal activation function for deep neural networks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-29 John Chidiac , Danielle Azar

This paper introduces scalable, sampling-based algorithms that optimize trained neural networks with ReLU activations. We first propose an iterative algorithm that takes advantage of the piecewise linear structure of ReLU neural networks…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Georgia Perakis , Asterios Tsiourvas

In this paper we theoretically investigate application of a bistable Fabry-P\'{e}rot semiconductor laser under optical-injection as all-optical activation unit for multilayer perceptron optical neural networks. The proposed device is…

Emerging Technologies · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Jasna V. Crnjanski , Isidora Teofilović , Marko M. Krstić , Dejan M. Gvozdić