Large-scale programmable silicon photonics for quantum and classical machine learning

Photonic technologies provide many unique physical advantages including ultra-high bandwidths, energy-efficient operations, and low coupling to environmental noise. Furthermore, recent advances in foundry-based manufacturing platforms have enabled the emerging field of integrated systems photonics. In contrast to their bulk optics counterparts, these systems can co-integrate dense ensembles of active photonic and electronic components on a single wafer with high phase stability and small device footprints. Initial demonstrations of each element in the integrated photonics stack—sources, processors, and detectors—motivate the development of wafer-scale photonic integrated circuit implementations, which are poised to form a key building block for fundamental advancements in computing, communications, and sensing. The first part of this thesis will discuss the development and early system-level demonstrations of linear programmable nanophotonic processors in the silicon-on-insulator platform for applications in quantum and classical machine learning and information processing. Using our developed processor architecture, we then present a nanophotonic Ising sampler for noise-assisted combinatorial optimization. Subsequently, we present a novel, foundry-compatible platform for integrating telecommunication-wavelength artificial atom quantum emitters directly in silicon photonic circuits. Finally, we report a capacity analysis of a structured interferometric receiver implemented with a silicon photonic processor for detection of optical signals in photon-sparse communication links.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Prabhu, Mihika

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Englund, Dirk R.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150215

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/150215