Upgrade 2024: Let's Upgrade Reality
April 11, 2024 // Upgrade 2024
Photonic Integrated Circuit Based on Thin Film Lithium Niobate
Summary
Photonic Integrated Circuit Based on Thin Film Lithium Niobate
A team at NTT Research is working on alternative methods of computing based on integrated, non-linear optical circuits called the Coherent Ising Machine (CIM). Their work combines the principles of quantum physics and nonlinear optics to create computational accelerators based on coherent circuits of light. Using pulses of light to perform calculations instead of transistors delivers faster clock rates and improved efficiency, which could have a large impact for a society with increasingly large computational needs.
Development of the hardware to support these new architectures is on the way. A recent breakthrough with lithium niobate has come from nanofabrication advances that allow for processing the material with extremely high fidelity. It’s now possible to pack photonic circuits onto the material just as with silicon, but with far higher performance, bandwidth, and functionality. Led by Kazu Gomi and Tim McKenna, this session discusses the state of TFLN (Thin Film Lithium Niobate) and NTT’s approach to this exciting new “chip.”