Inverse design of integrated photonic structures

Abstract

Designs of photonic devices have been mainly based on intuitive and brute-force approach. However, there has been increasing demand in photonics to obtain high device performance and improved functionalities along with small footprints. Among the different algorithms developed so far, objective-first inverse design algorithm is one of the greatly utilized methods. In the present work, we apply inverse design algorithm to investigate efficient and compact 1×N (1×2, 1×4) wavelength de-multiplexers for use at telecommunications wavelengths. Besides, we study different photonic structures such as nano-beam cavity and optical filters. Contrary to the forward design method, inverse design approach provides functional and compact photonic devices and it opens new avenues in exploiting the full space of practical structures. © 2019 IEEE.