Reconfigurable Photonics on a Glass Chip

Authors
I. V. Dyakonov, I. A. Pogorelov, I. B. Bobrov, A. A. Kalinkin, S. S. Straupe, S. P. Kulik, P. V. Dyakonov, and S. A. Evlashin

Phys. Rev. Applied, 10, 044048 (2018)

Abstract
The reconfigurability of integrated photonic chips plays a key role in current experiments in the area of linear-optical quantum computing. We demonstrate a reconfigurable multiport interferometer implemented as a femtosecond-laser-written integrated photonic device. The device includes a femtosecond-laser-written 4×4 multiport interferometer equipped with 12 thermo-optical phase shifters, making it a universal programmable linear-optical circuit. We achieve a fast switching time for a single nested Mach-Zender interferometer of ∼10 ms and quantitatively analyse the reconfigurability of the optical circuit. We believe that our results will improve the current state of quantum-optical experiments utilizing femtosecond-laser-written photonic circuits.