SBIR Phase II: Enabling Ultra-Compact Photonic Integrated Circuits with Designed Disordered Dielectrics

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使互联网基础设施跟上爆炸性增长的需求。互联网运行可行性的一个核心方面是光设备在传输、存储、计算和访问链的各个点上的交换速度。目前的技术还不能满足互联网数据量和访问速度预期增长所带来的速度和稳定性需求。这些公司目前的增长速度远远超出了摩尔定律的速度。需要的是一种颠覆性的光交换方法，它将允许数据管理跟上市场需求的步伐。提供这种基本能力的能力不仅将在互联网服务方面提供必要的国际领导地位，而且还将使参与创新的公司直接为其股东及其合作伙伴和附属公司产生重大的商业影响。这个小型企业创新研究的第二阶段项目是为了跨越与物质结构有关的基本新物理见解和在数据中心定价的高密度光学互连的新兴市场中将“光半导体”商业化的积极方法之间的鸿沟。直到最近，唯一已知的光子带隙固体是由有规则重复、有序的电介质晶格组成的光子晶体结构。一般认为晶体有序是光子带隙的必要条件。这个长期存在的假设现在被证明是错误的。以抑制密度波动（超均匀性）为特征的新型光子带隙结构包括各向同性的无序结构。这意味着光在光子固体中以相同的方式传播，而不受方向的影响（这对光子晶体来说是不可能的）。传统光子晶体和准晶体光子带隙材料中的波导布局受到严格的晶体特征轴约束，而超均匀无序固体波导的布局规则则没有这种基本约束。应用一种强大的新型无梯度优化方法，将涵盖光子晶体、准晶体和超均匀无序固体光子带隙的通用协议和高效计算框架推广到广泛的关键光子元件。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to allow the Internet infrastructure to keep up with explosive growth demand. A core aspect of Internet operational viability is switching speed of optical devices at various points of the transmission, storage, calculation, and access chain. Current technologies are not poised to be able to meet the speed and stability needs of the projected growth in Internet data volumes and access speed requirements. These are currently growing well beyond a Moore's Law pace. Needed is a disruptive approach to optical switching that will allow data management to keep pace with market needs. Ability to delivery this essential capability will provide not only essential international leadership in internet services, but also avail companies involved in the innovation to make a substantial commercial impact directly for their shareholders and to those of their partners and affiliates. This Small Business Innovation Research phase II project is an effort to cross the chasm between fundamental new physics insights relating to the structure of matter and an aggressive approach to commercializing 'Semiconductors of Light' in an emerging market for high density optical interconnects priced for datacenters. Until recently, the only known photonic bandgap solids were photonic crystal structures consisting of regularly repeating, orderly lattices of dielectric materials. It was generally assumed that crystal order was essential to have photonic bandgaps. This longstanding assumption is now known to be false. New photonic bandgap structures, characterized by suppressed density fluctuations (hyperuniformity), include disordered structures that are isotropic. This means that light propagates the same way through the photonic solid independent of direction (which is impossible for a photonic crystal). While the layout of waveguides in conventional photonic crystal and quasi crystal photonic bandgap materials is tightly-constrained to follow characteristic crystal axes, the layout rules for hyper uniform disordered solid waveguides have no such fundamental constraints. The universal protocol and highly-efficient computational framework covering the full range of photonic crystal, quasi crystal , and hyper uniform disordered solid-based photonic bandgaps will be generalized to a broad class of critically important photonic components by the application of a powerful new gradient-free optimization methods.