skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Reconfigurable application-specific photonic integrated circuit for solving partial differential equations
Abstract Solving mathematical equations faster and more efficiently has been a Holy Grail for centuries for scientists and engineers across all disciplines. While electronic digital circuits have revolutionized equation solving in recent decades, it has become apparent that performance gains from brute-force approaches of compute-solvers are quickly saturating over time. Instead, paradigms that leverage the universes’ natural tendency to minimize a system’s free energy, such as annealers or Ising Machines, are being sought after due to favorable complexity scaling. Here, we introduce a programmable analog solver leveraging the formal mathematical equivalence between Maxwell’s equations and photonic circuitry. It features a mesh network of nanophotonic beams to find solutions to partial differential equations. As an example, we designed, fabricated, and demonstrated a novel application-specific photonic integrated circuit comprised of electro-optically reconfigurable nodes and experimentally validated 90 % accuracy with respect to a commercial solver. Finally, we tested this photonic integrated chip performance by simulating thermal diffusion on a spacecraft’s heat shield during re-entry to a planet’s atmosphere. The programmable light-circuitry presented herein offers a facile route for solving complex problems and thus will have profound potential applications across many scientific and engineering fields.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2132929
PAR ID:
10535043
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
De Gruyter
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Nanophotonics
Volume:
13
Issue:
12
ISSN:
2192-8614
Page Range / eLocation ID:
2231 to 2239
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Nanophotonics)
    null (Ed.)
    Abstract When solving, modeling or reasoning about complex problems, it is usually convenient to use the knowledge of a parallel physical system for representing it. This is the case of lumped-circuit abstraction, which can be used for representing mechanical and acoustic systems, thermal and heat-diffusion problems and in general partial differential equations. Integrated photonic platforms hold the prospective to perform signal processing and analog computing inherently, by mapping into hardware specific operations which relies on the wave-nature of their signals, without trusting on logic gates and digital states like electronics. Here, we argue that in absence of a straightforward parallelism a homomorphism can be induced. We introduce a photonic platform capable of mimicking Kirchhoff’s law in photonics and used as node of a finite difference mesh for solving partial differential equation using monochromatic light in the telecommunication wavelength. Our approach experimentally demonstrates an arbitrary set of boundary conditions, generating a one-shot discrete solution of a Laplace partial differential equation, with an accuracy above 95% with respect to commercial solvers. Our photonic engine can provide a route to achieve chip-scale, fast (10 s of ps), and integrable reprogrammable accelerators for the next generation hybrid high-performance computing. Summary A photonic integrated platform which can mimic Kirchhoff’s law in photonics is used for approximately solve partial differential equations noniteratively using light, with high throughput and low-energy levels. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; (, Scientific Reports)
    Abstract Microwave photonics uses light to carry and process microwave signals over a photonic link. However, light can instead be used as a stimulus to microwave devices that directly control microwave signals. Such optically controlled amplitude and phase-shift switches are investigated for use in reconfigurable microwave systems, but they suffer from large footprint, high optical power level required for switching, lack of scalability and complex integration requirements, restricting their implementation in practical microwave systems. Here, we report Monolithic Optically Reconfigurable Integrated Microwave Switches (MORIMSs) built on a CMOS compatible silicon photonic chip that addresses all of the stringent requirements. Our scalable micrometer-scale switches provide higher switching efficiency and require optical power orders of magnitude lower than the state-of-the-art. Also, it opens a new research direction on silicon photonic platforms integrating microwave circuitry. This work has important implications in reconfigurable microwave and millimeter wave devices for future communication networks. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Advanced Optical Materials)
    Abstract Silicon photonics has evolved from lab research to commercial products in the past decade as it plays an increasingly crucial role in data communication for next‐generation data centers and high‐performance computing. Recently, programmable silicon photonics has also found new applications in quantum and classical information processing. A key component of programmable silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is the phase shifter, traditionally realized via thermo‐optic or free‐carrier effects that are weak, volatile, and power hungry. A non‐volatile phase shifter can circumvent these limitations by requiring zero power to maintain the switched phases. Previously non‐volatile phase modulation is achieved via phase‐change or ferroelectric materials, but the switching energy remains high (pico to nano joules) and the speed is slow (micro to milliseconds). Here, a non‐volatile III‐V‐on‐silicon photonic phase shifter based on a HfO2memristor with sub‐pJ switching energy (≈400 fJ), representing over an order of magnitude improvement in energy efficiency compared to the state of the art, is reported. The non‐volatile phase shifter can be switched reversibly using a single 100 ns pulse and exhibits excellent endurance over 800 cycles. This technology can enable future energy‐efficient programmable PICs for data centers, optical neural networks, and quantum information processing. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; (, APL Materials)
    Programmable photonics play a crucial role in many emerging applications, from optical accelerators for machine learning to quantum information technologies. Conventionally, photonic systems are tuned by mechanisms such as the thermo-optic effect, free carrier dispersion, the electro-optic effect, or micro-mechanical movement. Although these physical effects allow either fast (>100 GHz) or large contrast (>60 dB) switching, their high static power consumption is not optimal for programmability, which requires only infrequent switching and has a long static time. Non-volatile materials, such as phase-change materials, ferroelectrics, vanadium dioxide, and memristive metal oxide materials, can offer an ideal solution thanks to their reversible switching and non-volatile behavior, enabling a truly “set-and-forget” programmable unit with no static power consumption. In recent years, we have indeed witnessed the fast adoption of non-volatile materials in programmable photonic systems, including photonic integrated circuits and free-space meta-optics. Here, we review the recent progress in the field of programmable photonics, based on non-volatile materials. We first discuss the material’s properties, operating mechanisms, and then their potential applications in programmable photonics. Finally, we provide an outlook for future research directions. The review serves as a reference for choosing the ideal material system to realize non-volatile operation for various photonic applications. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, Nanophotonics)
    Abstract Atomically thin, two-dimensional, transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers have recently emerged as a versatile platform for optoelectronics. Their appeal stems from a tunable direct bandgap in the visible and near-infrared regions, the ability to enable strong coupling to light, and the unique opportunity to address the valley degree of freedom over atomically thin layers. Additionally, monolayer TMDs can host defect-bound localized excitons that behave as single-photon emitters, opening exciting avenues for highly integrated 2D quantum photonic circuitry. By introducing plasmonic nanostructures and metasurfaces, one may effectively enhance light harvesting, direct valley-polarized emission, and route valley index. This review article focuses on these critical aspects to develop integrated photonic and valleytronic applications by exploiting exciton–plasmon coupling over a new hybrid material platform. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email