High-speed programmable photonic circuits in a cryogenically compatible, visible–near-infrared 200 mm CMOS architecture

By M. Dong, Genevieve Clark, A. Leenheer, Matthew Zimmermann, D. Dominguez, A. Menssen, David Heim, Gerald Gilbert, Dirk Englund, M. Eichenfield. Nature Photonics, 2021

187 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent advances in photonic integrated circuits have enabled a new generation of programmable Mach–Zehnder meshes (MZMs) realized by using cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers capable of universal linear-optical transformations on N input/output optical modes. MZMs serve critical functions in photonic quantum information processing, quantum-enhanced sensor networks, machine learning and other applications. However, MZM implementations reported to date rely on thermo-optic phase shifters, which limit applications due to slow response times and high power consumption. Here we introduce a large-scale MZM platform made in a 200 mm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor foundry, which uses aluminium nitride piezo-optomechanical actuators coupled to silicon nitride waveguides, enabling low-loss propagation with phase modulation at greater than 100 MHz in the visible–near-infrared wavelengths. Moreover, the vanishingly low hold-power consumption of the piezo-actuators enables these photonic integrated circuits to operate at cryogenic temperatures, paving the way for a fully integrated device architecture for a range of quantum applications. A four-port programmable interferometer based on aluminium nitride piezo-optomechanical actuators coupled to silicon nitride waveguides is reported. Its low-power mechanism, which can be fabricated in a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor foundry, facilitates operation at cryogenic temperatures.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e8a5ebfba41d69970fb0d3c41b1a885952c327e