Demonstration of a 4 x 4-port Self-configuring Universal Linear Optical Component

We present our work on reconfigurable, general-purpose linear photonic circuits. Photonic integrated circuits today resemble the very specialized application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) rather than general-purpose CPUs or highly flexible field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). Reprogrammable optical circuits could dramatically reduce the time to application or prototype a new optical chip. We will discuss the possibilities of such circuits, and present a working implementation of a 4 x 4-port universal linear circuit implemented in silicon photonics. We demonstrate the circuit performing two distinct linear operations by changing the software algorithms that controls the circuit.