A scheme for computation in nanoscale dynamical systems: Gated discrete phase-shift interactions

In this paper, we present a new scheme to process information distributed through a network of locally coupled integrate-and-fire elements, realizable at the nanoscale. As a physical example, we consider single-electron-tunneling in the Coulomb blockade regime as the integrate-and-fire mechanism. We show that each physical gate can act as every possible logic gate, simply selected with an appropriate bias voltage. Since the state variables are persistently stored in the computing elements during the time between operations, and since every operation between state variables can be performed without the need for additional circuitry, our proposed scheme should be ideal for the implementation of collective computation with an array of locally coupled integrate-and-fire elements.