Scalable Analysis for Arbitrary Photonic Integrated Waveguide Meshes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable mathematical method to analyze the transfer functions of complex, programmable 2D photonic waveguide mesh circuits, addressing a key design bottleneck in integrated photonics.

Contribution

A novel inductive approach for efficiently computing the scattering matrix of arbitrary 2D photonic waveguide meshes, enabling scalable and programmable photonic circuit analysis.

Findings

First scalable method for arbitrary 2D waveguide mesh analysis

Enables efficient computation of transfer functions in complex meshes

Unblocks design bottlenecks in programmable photonic circuits

Abstract

The advances in fabrication processes in different material platforms employed in integrated optics are opening the path towards the implementation of circuits with increasing degree of complexity. In addition to the more conventional Application Specific Photonic Circuit (ASPIC) paradigm the Programmable Multifunctional Nanophotonics (PMN) approach is a transversal concept inspired by similar approaches, which are already employed in other technology fields. For instance, in electronics Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices enable a much more flexible universal operation as compared to Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs).In photonics, the (PMN) concept is enabled by two dimensional (2D) waveguide meshes for which, the number of possible input and output ports quickly builds up and furthermore, internal signal flow paths make the computation of transfer functions an intractable problem. Here we report a scalable method based on mathematical induction that allows one to obtain the scattering matrix of any 2D integrated photonic waveguide mesh circuit composed of an arbitrary number of cells and which is easily programmable. To our knowledge this is the first report of the kind and our results open the path to unblock this important design bottleneck.