Hardware error correction for programmable photonics
Abstract
Programmable photonic circuits of reconfigurable interferometers can be used to implement arbitrary operations on optical modes, providing a flexible platform for accelerating tasks in quantum simulation, signal processing, and artificial intelligence. A major obstacle to scaling up these systems is static fabrication error, where small component errors within each device accrue to produce significant errors within the circuit computation. Mitigating this error usually requires numerical optimization dependent on real-time feedback from the circuit, which can greatly limit the scalability of the hardware. Here we present a deterministic approach to correcting circuit errors by locally correcting hardware errors within individual optical gates. We apply our approach to simulations of large scale optical neural networks and infinite impulse response filters implemented in programmable photonics, finding that they remain resilient to component error well beyond modern day process tolerances. Our results highlight a potential way to scale up programmable photonics to hundreds of modes with current fabrication processes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 27, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1364/optica.424052
Entities
People
- Dirk Englund
- Ryan Hamerly
- Saumil Bandyopadhyay
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Science Foundation