Quantized Inverse Design for Photonic Integrated Circuits

authored by

Frederik Schubert, Konrad Bethmann, Yannik Mahlau, Fabian Hartmann, Reinhard Caspary, Marco Munderloh, Jörn Ostermann, Bodo Rosenhahn

Abstract

The inverse design of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) presents distinctive computational challenges, including their large memory requirements. Advancements in the two-photon polymerization (2PP) fabrication process introduce additional complexity, necessitating the development of more flexible optimization algorithms to enable the creation of multi-material 3D structures with unique properties. This paper presents an efficient reverse-mode automatic differentiation framework for finite-difference timedomain (FDTD) simulations that is able to handle several constraints arising from novel fabrication methods. Our method is based on straight-through gradient estimation that enables non-differentiable shape parametrizations. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by creating increasingly complex structures to solve the coupling problem in integrated photonic circuits. The results highlight the potential of our method for future PIC design and practical applications.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Information Processing
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines

Type

Preprint

No. of pages

19

Publication date

14.07.2024

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.10273 (Access: Open)