Reconfigurable lattice mesh designs for programmable photonic processors

Abstract

We propose and analyse two novel mesh design geometries for the implementation of tunable optical cores in programmable photonic processors. These geometries are the hexagonal and the triangular lattice. They are compared here to a previously proposed square mesh topology in terms of a series of figures of merit that account for metrics that are relevant to on-chip integration of the mesh. We find that that the hexagonal mesh is the most suitable option of the three considered for the implementation of the reconfigurable optical core in the programmable processor.