Inverse-designed 6 × 6 waveguide crossing for a Benes-based network

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 32; no. 24; p. 42908
• Main Authors: Ma, Hansi, Yang, Junbo, Zhao, Na, Chen, Huan, Zhang, Zhaojian, Peng, Miao, Du, Te, Jiang, Xinpeng, Wu, Jiagui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 18.11.2024
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.539990

In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an inverse-designed 6 × 6 waveguide crossing with a footprint of 9 μm × 6.72 μm on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The specific-application waveguide crossing greatly simplifies the Benes-based network layout and significantly reduces its footprint. The measured insertion losses (ILs) and crosstalks (CTs) are less than 1.8 dB and lower than –20.5 dB, respectively, from 1540 nm to 1560 nm. In addition, we theoretically demonstrate the 8 × 8 optical switch by combining this specific-application waveguide crossing with Ge 2 Sb 2 Se 4 Te 1 -based optical switches. The 8 × 8 optical switch can be widely used in Benes-based networks. The footprint of the 8 × 8 optical switch is only about 43.8 μm × 8.408 μm. The simulated ILs and CTs are less than 2.0 dB and lower than -10.4 dB, respectively, from 1540 nm to 1560 nm.