Towards an optical FPGA - Programmable silicon photonic circuits
Abstract
A novel technique is presented for realising programmable silicon photonic circuits. Once the proposed photonic circuit is programmed, its routing is retained without the need for additional power consumption. This technology enables a uniform multi-purpose design of photonic chips for a range of different applications and performance requirements, as it can be programmed for each specific application after chip fabrication. Therefore the cost per chip can be dramatically reduced because of the increase in production volume, and rapid prototyping of new photonic circuits is enabled. Essential building blocks for programmable circuits, erasable directional couplers (DCs) were designed and fabricated, utilising ion implanted waveguides. We demonstrate permanent switching between the drop port and through port of the DCs using a localised post-fabrication laser annealing process. Proof-of-principle demonstrators in the form of generic 1X4 and 2X2 programmable switching circuits were then fabricated and subsequently programmed, to define their function.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.01656,
title = {Towards an optical FPGA - Programmable silicon photonic circuits},
author = {Xia Chen and Milan M. Milosevic and Antoine F. J. Runge and Xingshi Yu and Ali Z. Khokhar and Sakellaris Mailis and David J. Thomson and Anna C. Peacock and Shinichi Saito and Graham T. Reed},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.01656},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
19 pages, 6 figures