Asymptotically Fault-Tolerant Programmable Photonics

Abstract

Component errors limit the scaling of programmable coherent photonic circuits. These errors arise because the standard tunable photonic coupler -- the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) -- cannot be perfectly programmed to the cross state. Here, we introduce two modified circuit architectures that overcome this limitation: (1) a 3-splitter MZI mesh for generic errors, and (2) a broadband MZI+Crossing design for correlated errors. Because these designs allow for perfect realization of the cross state, the matrix fidelity no longer decreases with mesh size, allowing scaling to arbitrarily large meshes. The proposed architectures support progressive self-configuration, are more compact than previous MZI-doubling schemes, and do not require additional phase shifters. This eliminates a major obstacle to the development of very-large-scale linear photonic circuits.

12 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. SM: 9 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (12)

• Quantum computational advantage using photons
• 11 TeraFLOPs per second photonic convolutional accelerator for deep learning optical neural networks
• Arbitrarily accurate composite pulses
• High-speed programmable photonic circuits in a cryogenically compatible, visible-NIR 200 mm CMOS architecture
• Delocalized Photonic Deep Learning on the Internet's Edge
• Design of optical neural networks with component imprecisions
• Hardware error correction for programmable photonics
• 60dB high-extinction auto-configured Mach--Zehnder interferometer
• Accurate Self-Configuration of Rectangular Multiport Interferometers
• Further Compactifying Linear Optical Unitaries
• Stability of Self-Configuring Large Multiport Interferometers
• Mitigating linear optics imperfections via port allocation and compilation

Cited by in corpus (9)

• The physics of optical computing
• Coherent photonic crossbar as a universal linear operator
• Waveguide-multiplexed photonic matrix-vector multiplication processor using multiport photodetectors
• Braided interferometer mesh for robust photonic matrix-vector multiplications with non-ideal components
• Low-depth, compact and error-tolerant photonic matrix-vector multiplication beyond the unitary group
• The Impact of Feature Representation on the Accuracy of Photonic Neural Networks
• Enhanced Hong-Ou-Mandel Manifolds and figures of merit for linear chains of identical micro-ring resonators
• Universal low-depth two-unitary design of programmable photonic circuits
• Calibration of cascaded phase shifters using pairwise scan method in silicon photonics integrated chip