Understanding how nano- or micro-scale structures and material properties can be optimally configured to attain specific functionalities remains a fundamental challenge. Photonic metasurfaces, for instance, can be spectrally tuned through material choice and structural geometry to achieve unique optical responses. However, existing numerical design methods require prior identification of specific material-structure combinations, or device classes, as the starting point for optimization. As such, a unified solution that simultaneously optimizes across materials and geometries has yet to be realized. To overcome these challenges, we present a global deep learning-based inverse design framework, where a conditional deep convolutional generative adversarial network is trained on colored images encoded with a range of material and structural parameters, including refractive index, plasma frequency, and geometric design. We demonstrate that, in response to target absorption spectra, the network can identify an effective metasurface in terms of its class, materials properties, and overall shape. Furthermore, the model can arrive at multiple design variants with distinct materials and structures that present nearly identical absorption spectra. Our proposed framework is thus an important step towards global photonics and materials design strategies that can identify combinations of device categories, material properties, and geometric parameters which algorithmically deliver a sought functionality.
Three-dimensional complete photonic bandgap materials or photonic crystals block light propagation in all directions. The rod-connected diamond structure exhibits the largest photonic bandgap known to date and supports a complete bandgap for the lowest refractive index contrast ratio down to $n_{high}/n_{low} \sim 1.9$. We confirm this threshold by measuring a complete photonic bandgap in the infrared region in Sn--S--O $(n\sim1.9)$ and Ge--Sb--S--O $(n\sim2)$ inverse rod-connected diamond structures. The structures were fabricated using a low-temperature chemical vapor deposition process via …
The realization of ultra-compact passive silicon photonic devices is becoming more and more important for the future large-scale photonic integration as desired for many systems. Although some compact silicon photonic devices have been demonstrated by using inverse design, the device performance is still insufficient for real applications. Here, we propose and realize several representative ultra-compact advanced passive silicon photonic devices with decent performances by introducing subwavelength-grating (SWG) structures developed by our high-efficiency inverse design method. These devices a…
Recent advances in the design and fabrication of on-chip optical microresonators has greatly expanded their applications in photonics, enabling metrology, communications, and on-chip lasers. Designs for these applications require fine control of dispersion, bandwidth and high optical quality factors. Co-engineering these figures of merit remains a significant technological challenge due to design strategies being largely limited to analytical tuning of cross-sectional geometry. Here, we show that photonic inverse-design facilitates and expands the functionality of on-chip microresonators; theo…
Topological photonic crystal waveguides can create edge states that may be more robust against fabrication disorder, and can yield propagation modes below the light line. We present a fully three-dimensional method to modify state-of-the-art designs to achieve a significant bandwidth improvement for lossless propagation. Starting from an initial design with a normalized bandwidth of 7.5% (13.4 THz), the modification gives more than 100% bandwidth improvement to 16.2% (28.0 THz). This new design is obtained using automatic differentiation enabled inverse design and a guided mode expansion techn…
The effect of surface termination on the inverse Goos Hanchen (GH) shift of two dimensional (2D) negatively refractive photonic crystal (NRPhC) containing air holes arranged in hexagonal lattice in a dielectric background is investigated for TM polarization. Results show that the magnitude of the inverse GH shift of 2DNRPhC strongly depends on surface termination even for an incident beam with a fixed frequency and incidence angle. Further study by calculating the dispersion of surface mode of 2D-NRPhC as a function of surface termination reveals that 2DNRPhC presents large inverse Goos Hanche…
Topological concepts open many new horizons for photonic devices, from integrated optics to lasers. The complexity of large scale topological devices asks for an effective solution of the inverse problem: how best to engineer the topology for a specific application? We introduce a novel machine learning approach to the topological inverse problem. We train a neural network system with the band structure of the Aubry-Andre-Harper model and then adopt the network for solving the inverse problem. Our application is able to identify the parameters of a complex topological insulator in order to obt…
Inverse-Designed High-Q and Small-Mode-Volume Silicon Nitride Photonic Crystal Cavities for Second- and Third-Harmonic Generation
NTT Nanophotonics Center, NTT, Inc.（NTT公司纳米光子学中心）；Basic Research Laboratories, NTT, Inc.（NTT公司基础研究实验室）；International Center for Elementary Particle Physics, University of Tokyo（东京大学国际基本粒子物理中心）；Device Technology Laboratories, NTT, Inc.（NTT公司器件技术实验室）；Institute of Science Tokyo（东京科学大学）
We propose a novel inverse-design method that enables brute-force discovery of photonic crystal (PhC) structures with complex spectral degeneracies. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate PhCs exhibiting third-order Dirac points formed by the \emph{accidental} degeneracy of modes of monopolar, dipolar, and quadrupolar nature. We show that under suitable conditions, these modes can coalesce and form a third-order exceptional point (EP3), leading to diverging Petermann factors. We show that the spontaneous emission (SE) rate of emitters at such EP3s, related to the local density of states, can …
Typically, photonic waveguides designed for nonlinear frequency conversion rely on intuitive and established principles, including index guiding and band gap engineering, and are based on simple shapes with high degrees of symmetry. We show that recently developed inverse-design techniques can be applied to discover new kinds of microstructured fibers and metasurfaces designed to achieve large nonlinear frequency conversion efficiencies. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate complex, wavelengthscale chalcogenide glass fibers and gallium phosphide metasurfaces exhibiting some of the largest n…
We develop and implement a new mathematical and computational framework for designing photonic elements with one or more high-$Q$ scattering resonances. The approach relies on solving for the poles of the scattering matrix, which mathematically amounts to minimizing the determinant of the Fredholm integral operator of the electric field with respect to the permittivity profile of the scattering element. We apply the method to design subwavelength gradient-permittivity structures with multiple scattering resonances and quality factors exceeding 500. We also find the spectral scattering cross se…
The energy flux patterns of inverse Goos-Hanchen (GH) shift around the interface between air and negatively refractive photonic crystal (NRPhC) with different surface terminations is investigated. Results show that NRPhC exhibits inverse GH shift in TM and TE polarization, and the localization and pattern of energy flux differ in TM and TE polarizations and are strongly affected by surface termination. This is different to the condition of negative permittivity materials (i.e., metal), which only presents inverse GH shift in TM polarization. In the case of TE polarization, the energy flux patt…
The band structure of an Si inverse diamond structure whose lattice point shape was vacant regular octahedrons, was calculated using plane wave expansion method. A complete photonic band gap was theoretically confirmed at around 0.4 THz. It is said that three-dimensional photonic crystals have no polarization anisotropy in photonic band gap (stop gap, stop band) of high symmetry points in normal incidence. However, it was experimentally confirmed that the polarization orientation of a reflected wave was different from that of an incident wave, [I$(X,Y)$], where $(X,Y)$ is the coordinate system…
Photonic band structures are a typical fingerprint of periodic optical structures, and are usually observed in spectroscopic quantities such as transmission, reflection and absorption. Here we show that also the chiro-optical response of a metasurface constituted by a lattice of non-centrosymmetric, L-shaped holes in a dielectric slab shows a band structure, where intrinsic and extrinsic chirality effects are clearly recognized and connected to localized and delocalized resonances. Superchiral near-fields can be excited in correspondence to these resonances, and anomalous behaviors as a functi…
Data-driven approaches have been proposed as effective strategies for the inverse design and optimization of photonic structures in recent years. In order to assist data-driven methods for the design of topology of photonic devices, we propose a topological encoding method that transforms photonic structures represented by binary images to a continuous sparse representation. This sparse representation can be utilized for dimensionality reduction and dataset generation, enabling effective analysis and optimization of photonic topologies with data-driven approaches. As a proof of principle, we l…
Integrated optoelectronics is emerging as a promising platform of neural network accelerator, which affords efficient in-memory computing and high bandwidth interconnectivity. The inherent optoelectronic noises, however, make the photonic systems error-prone in practice. It is thus imperative to devise strategies to mitigate and, if possible, harness noises in photonic computing systems. Here, we demonstrate a photonic generative network as a part of a generative adversarial network (GAN). This network is implemented with a photonic core consisting of an array of four programable phase-change …
We propose an approach to engineer quartic metamaterials starting from the desired photonic states. We apply our method to the design of the high-k asymptotics of metamaterials, extreme non-reciprocity and complex bi-anisotropic media.
Silicon photonics is becoming a leading technology in photonics, displacing traditional fiber optic transceivers in long-haul and intra-data-center links and enabling new applications such as solid-state LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and optical machine learning. Further improving the density and performance of silicon photonics, however, has been challenging, due to the large size and limited performance of traditional semi-analytically designed components. Automated optimization of photonic devices using inverse design is a promising path forward but has until now faced difficulties in…
The ability of photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs) to confine and slow down light makes them an ideal component to enhance the performance of various photonic devices, such as optical modulators or sensors. However, the integration of PCWs in photonic applications poses design challenges, most notably, engineering the PCW mode dispersion and creating efficient coupling devices. Here, we solve these challenges with photonic inverse design, and experimentally demonstrate a slow-light PCW optical phased array (OPA) with a wide steering range. Even and odd mode PCWs are engineered for a group index…
We present an inverse design approach to significantly improve the figures-of-merit for chiral photon elements and quantum emitters in topological photonic crystal slab waveguides. Beginning with a topological waveguide mode with a group index of approximately 10 and a maximum forwards or backwards Purcell factor at a chiral point of less than 0.5, we perform optimizations of the directional Purcell factor. We use a fully three dimensional guided-mode expansion method to efficiently calculate waveguide band dispersion properties and modes, while automatic differentiation is employed to calcula…
Efficient light coupling into integrated photonic devices is of key importance to a wide variety of applications. "Inverse nanotapers" are widely used, in which the waveguide width is reduced to match an incident mode. Here, we demonstrate novel, "double inverse" tapers, in which we taper both the waveguide height, as well as the width. We demonstrate that in comparison to regular inverse tapers, the double inverse tapers have excellent polarization-independent coupling. In addition, the optimum coupling is achieved with much larger taper dimension, enabling the use of photolithography instead…
Transport inhibition via Anderson localization is ubiquitous in disordered periodic lattices. However, in crystals displaying only flat bands disorder can lift macroscopic band flattening, removing geometric localization and enabling transport in certain conditions. Such a striking phenomenon, dubbed inverse Anderson transition and predicted for three-dimensional flat band systems, has thus far not been directly observed. Here we suggest a simple quasi one-dimensional photonic flat band system, namely an Aharonov-Bohm photonic cage, in which correlated binary disorder induces an inverse Anders…
Inverse Design of the Topology Bandwidth Tradeoff in Valley Photonic Crystals
IIT Bombay（印度理工学院孟买分校）；Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR)（贾瓦哈拉尔·尼赫鲁高级科学研究中心）；Indian Institute of Technology Bombay（印度理工学院孟买分校）
Deep learning in the context of nano-photonics is mostly discussed in terms of its potential for inverse design of photonic devices or nanostructures. Many of the recent works on machine-learning inverse design are highly specific, and the drawbacks of the respective approaches are often not immediately clear. In this review we want therefore to provide a critical review on the capabilities of deep learning for inverse design and the progress which has been made so far. We classify the different deep learning-based inverse design approaches at a higher level as well as by the context of their …
Photonic inverse design typically seeks designs parameterized by binary arrays, where the values of each element correspond to the presence or absence of material at a particular point in space. Gradient-based approaches to photonic inverse design often include thresholding of non-binary optimization arrays; when the thresholding is sufficiently sharp, binary designs are obtained. However, difficulty can arise due to vanishing gradients for sharp thresholds, which cause optimization to stall. Here, we present hypersphere optimization, a new method of carrying out binarized photonic optimizatio…
Diamond hosts optically active color centers with great promise in quantum computation, networking, and sensing. Realization of such applications is contingent upon the integration of color centers into photonic circuits. However, current diamond quantum optics experiments are restricted to single devices and few quantum emitters because fabrication constraints limit device functionalities, thus precluding color center integrated photonic circuits. In this work, we utilize inverse design methods to overcome constraints of cutting-edge diamond nanofabrication methods and fabricate compact and r…
In this work, we demonstrate a compact toolkit of inverse-designed topologically optimized silicon-photonic devices that are arranged in a plug-and-play fashion to realize many different photonic integrated circuits, both passive and active, each with a small footprint. The silicon-on-insulator 1550-nm toolkit contains a 2x2 3dB splitter-combiner, a 2x2 waveguide crossover and a 2x2 all-forward add-drop resonator. The resonator can become a 2x2 electro-optical crossbar switch by means of the thermo-optical effect or phase-change cladding or free-carrier injection. For each of the ten circuits …
Metasurfaces provide the disruptive technology enabling miniaturization of complex cascades of optical elements on a plane. We leverage the benefits of such a surface to develop a planar integrated photonic beam collimator for on-chip optofluidic sensing applications. While most of the current work focuses on miniaturizing the optical "detection" hardware, little attention is given to develop on-chip hardware for optical "excitation". In this manuscript, we propose a flat metasurface for beam collimation in optofluidic applications. We implement an inverse design approach to optimize the metas…
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light（马克斯·普朗克光科学研究所）；Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg（埃尔朗根-纽伦堡大学）；Technical University of Denmark（丹麦技术大学）；John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University（哈佛大学约翰·A·保尔森工程与应用科学学院）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））；SPINS Photonics Inc（SPINS光子有限公司）
In this paper, we propose a pre-trained-combined neural network (PTCN) as a comprehensive solution to the inverse design of an integrated photonic circuit. By utilizing both the initially pre-trained inverse and forward model with a joint training process, our PTCN model shows remarkable tolerance to the quantity and quality of the training data. As a proof of concept demonstration, the inverse design of a wavelength demultiplexer is used to verify the effectiveness of the PTCN model. The correlation coefficient of the prediction by the presented PTCN model remains greater than 0.974 even when…
