Hardware error correction for programmable photonics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a deterministic method for correcting static fabrication errors in programmable photonic circuits, enabling scalable quantum and classical optical processing despite component imperfections.

Contribution

It presents a local correction technique for hardware errors in optical gates, reducing reliance on real-time feedback and enhancing scalability of photonic systems.

Findings

Circuits remain resilient to component errors beyond current fabrication tolerances.

The approach enables scaling to hundreds of modes in programmable photonics.

Simulations show improved performance in optical neural networks and filters.

Abstract

Programmable photonic circuits of reconfigurable interferometers can be used to implement arbitrary operations on optical modes, facilitating a flexible platform for accelerating tasks in quantum simulation, signal processing, and artificial intelligence. A major obstacle to scaling up these systems is static fabrication error, where small component errors within each device accrue to produce significant errors within the circuit computation. Mitigating this error usually requires numerical optimization dependent on real-time feedback from the circuit, which can greatly limit the scalability of the hardware. Here we present a deterministic approach to correcting circuit errors by locally correcting hardware errors within individual optical gates. We apply our approach to simulations of large scale optical neural networks and infinite impulse response filters implemented in programmable photonics, finding that they remain resilient to component error well beyond modern day process tolerances. Our results highlight a new avenue for scaling up programmable photonics to hundreds of modes within current day fabrication processes.