Phys.org  October 11, 2023
To enhance the functional versatility of chips researchers in China introduced the concept of reconfiguration into photonic integrated circuits. Inspired by field programmable gate arrays in the electrical domain, they developed programmable photonic chips employing various topologies. However, users still encounter challenges when utilizing these devices, as they need to understand the internal structure and principles of the chip and individually adjust the tunable basic units within the topology network. The researchers employed the quadrilateral topological network based on the on-chip Mach–Zehnder interferometer as a black box to realize a highly self-reconfigurable optical signal processor. By leveraging this approach, they got positive real-valued matrix computation, optical routing, and low-loss optical energy splitting. According to the researchers the demonstration shows the potential of on-chip programmable photonic waveguide meshes… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Specific structure and principle of the chip. Credit: Optical Materials Express Vol. 13, Issue 11, pp. 3138-3147 (2023)