A wideband silicon photonic duplexer constructed from a deep photonic network of custom Mach-Zehnder interferometers

Using a highly-scalable and physics-informed design platform with custom Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs), we design and experimentally demonstrate a 1 x 2 wideband duplexer on silicon operating within 1450-1630 nm. The device is constructed from six layers of cascaded MZIs whose geometries are optimized using an equivalent artificial neural network, in a total timeframe of 75 seconds. Experimental results show below 0.72 dB deviation from the arbitrarily-specified target response, and less than 0.66 dB insertion loss. Demonstrated capabilities and the computational efficiency of our design framework pave the way towards the scalable deployment of custom MZI networks in communications, sensing, and computation applications.