Photonic analog computing with integrated silicon waveguides

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how silicon integrated waveguides can be spectrally tailored to perform high-speed, low-cost analog computing tasks such as differentiation and solving differential equations in the optical domain.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to design silicon photonic devices for analog computing by spectral tailoring, enabling high-speed and compact optical computing systems.

Findings

Successful design of silicon waveguide-based differentiator

Implementation of optical differential equation solver

Potential for high-speed, low-cost optical computing

Abstract

The spectra of silicon integrated waveguides are tailored to process analog computing (i.e.,differential and integral) in optical domain with huge bandwidth.With the theory of signal and system, we design some silicon integrated devices to implement photonic differentiator and optical differential equation solver. The basic principle is to tailor the spectra of silicon integrated waveguides to meet the requirements of analog computing circuits. These analog photonic integrated circuits are very promising in future computing systems with high speed, low cost, and compact size. We also plan to employ these basic computing units in more complex computing modules.