We consider waveguide lattices as the architecture to implement a wide range of multiport transformations. In this architecture, a particular transfer matrix is obtained by setting step-wise profiles of propagation constants experienced by a field evolving in a lattice. To investigate the capabilities of this architecture, we numerically study the implementation of random transfer matrices as well as several notable cases, such as the discrete Fourier transform, the Hadamard, and permutation matrices. We show that waveguide lattice schemes are more compact than their traditional lumped-parameter counterparts, thus the proposed architecture may be beneficial for photonic information processing systems of the future.

中文翻译：

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用于多通道光学变换的基于波导晶格的架构

我们将波导晶格视为实现各种多端口转换的架构。在该架构中，通过设置在晶格中演化的场所经历的传播常数的逐步分布来获得特定的传输矩阵。为了研究这种架构的功能，我们对随机传递矩阵的实现以及几个值得注意的情况进行了数值研究，例如离散傅立叶变换、Hadamard 和置换矩阵。我们表明波导晶格方案比传统的集总参数方案更紧凑，因此所提出的架构可能有利于未来的光子信息处理系统。