State-of-the-art and next-generation integrated photonic design

¹ Ansys, Inc., 1700 – 1095 West Pender Street, Vancouver, BC, V6E 2M6, Canada
² University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1,
³ Cadence Design Systems, Inc., 2655 Seely Avenue, San Jose, CA, 95134, USA

^* Corresponding author: james.pond@ansys.com

Published online: 13 October 2022

Abstract

The relentless need for higher bandwidth, lower power and lower cost data communications has driven tremendous innovation in integrated photonics in recent years. This innovation has been supported by state-of-the-art electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) workflows, which enable process design kit (PDK) centred schematic driven design and layout, as well as statistically enabled electro-optical simulation. In addition, custom components can be introduced and optimized for a specific foundry process using advanced methods such as photonic inverse design and machine learning. While much of the innovation has been motivated by data communications, it has enabled a variety of different applications such as sensing, integrated LiDAR and quantum information technologies. We discuss the latest innovations in EPDA workflows and show how a silicon photonic ring-based wavelength demultiplexing (WDM) system can be easily designed, simulated and implemented. In addition, we discuss the extension of these workflows to support the design and simulation of quantum photonic devices, enabling designers to consider the effects of realistic sources and manufacturing imperfections when designing quantum building blocks to meet specific fidelity and fault tolerance thresholds.