New easy-to-use optical chip can self-configure to perform various functions

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 […]

Intelligent optical chip to improve telecommunications

Phys.org  October 15, 2021 An international team of researchers (Canada, France, China, Australia) developed and demonstrated a self-adjusting on-chip optical pulse-shaper based on the concept of temporal coherence synthesis. The scheme enables on-the-fly reconfigurability of output optical waveforms by using an all-optical sampling technique in combination with an evolutionary optimization algorithm. They showed that particle-swarm optimization can outperform more commonly used algorithms in terms of convergence time. The system combines all key ingredients for realizing fully on-chip smart optical waveform generators for next-generation applications in telecommunications, laser engineering, and nonlinear optics. The team’s next steps include the investigation of more […]