Dan Ricinschi and Eisuke Tokumitsu

Abstract:
Ferroelectric materials are currently integrated in nonvolatile memory devices, whose principle is to allocate 0 and 1 logic bits to opposite orientations of the spontaneous polarization vector that are permitted by crystal symmetry. Typically made of randomly oriented grains, ferroelectrics tend to split into domains, according to the experienced sequence of electric fields, thermal treatments and any structural imperfections. On this background, we attempt to formulate new principles of exploiting such structural and operational degrees of freedom for unconventional applications of ferroelectrics. In this paper, we envision a new paradigm of ferroelectrics as processors of multiagent strategic interactions, employing unconventional mathematical tools (normally used for optimizing the decision-making process of rational human subjects) for analyzing ferroelectric capacitors¡Ç response to combinatorial pulses. Specifically, we quantify the way microscopic assembly laws of the ferroelectric material mediate the amount of polarization reversed by two electrical pulses using the mathematical theory of games, applied to a strategic interaction between two hypothetical players impersonated by the two pulses. Such socially meaningful implementations of applied mathematics concepts onto an oxide material substrate are worth to consider in view of artificial intelligence applications, adding ferroelectrics to the class of media able to perform unconventional computations.

Keywords: ferroelectrics, game theory, unconventional computing, artificial intelligence