Local researchers are developing an advanced photonic integrated circuit that builds bridges between data superhighways. 

Experts at Monash and RMIT Universities in Melbourne say their advanced photonic integrated circuit could revolutionise the connectivity of current optical chips and replace bulky 3D-optics with a wafer thin slice of silicon.

The optical microcomb chip builds multiple lanes of the superhighway, now the self-calibrating chip has created the on and off ramps and bridges that connect them all and allow greater movement of data.

“We have demonstrated a self-calibrating programmable photonic filter chip, featuring a signal processing core and an integrated reference path for self-calibration,” explains project’s lead investigator, Professor Arthur Lowery. 

“Self-calibration is significant because it makes tunable photonic integrated circuits useful in the real world; applications include optical communications systems that switch signals to destinations based on their colour, very fast computations of similarity (correlators), scientific instrumentation for chemical or biological analysis, and even astronomy.

“Electronics saw similar improvements in the stability of radio filters using digital techniques, that led to many mobiles being able to share the same chunk of spectrum: our optical chips have similar architectures, but can operate on signals with Terahertz bandwidths,” he comments.

More details are accessible here.