Perfect Linear Optics using Silicon Photonics

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in using photonic technology to perform the underlying linear algebra operations required by different applications, including neuromorphic photonics, quantum computing and microwave processing, mainly aiming at taking advantage of the silicon photonics' (SiPho) credentials to support high-speed and energy-efficient operations. Mapping, however, a targeted matrix with absolute accuracy into the optical domain remains a huge challenge in linear optics, since state-of-the-art linear optical circuit architectures are highly sensitive to fabrication imperfections. This leads to reduced fidelity metrics that degrade faster as the insertion losses of the constituent optical matrix node or the matrix dimensions increase. In this work, we present for the first time a novel coherent SiPho crossbar (Xbar) that can support on-chip fidelity restoration while implementing linear algebra operations, realizing the first experimental demonstration of perfect on-chip arbitrary linear optical transformations. We demonstrate the experimental implementation of 10000 arbitrary linear transformations in the photonic domain achieving a record high fidelity of 99.997%+-0.002, limited mainly by the statistical error enforced by the measurement equipment. Our work represents the first integrated universal linear optical circuit that provides almost unity and loss-independent fidelity in the realization of arbitrary matrices, opening new avenues for exploring the use of light in resolving universal computational tasks.