Arbitrary reconfiguration of universal silicon photonic circuits by bacteria foraging algorithm to achieve reconfigurable photonic digital-to-analog conversion.

Reconfigurable/reprogrammable universal silicon photonic circuits represent a paradigm shift in designing photonic devices. However, it is very challenging to perform adaptive arbitrary reconfiguration when the high-dimensional solution of phase distribution cannot be explicitly determined, especially when there are random initial phase errors, which hinder the implementation of novel potential functions in universal circuits. This work presents an arbitrary black-box reconfiguration for universal circuits with random phase errors by a bacteria-foraging algorithm and unlocks a novel function of arbitrary-port-and-arbitrary-bit-resolution reconfigurable 6-bit photonic digital-to-analog conversion. This work offers a general and efficient method to ease multipurpose reconfiguration for universal silicon photonic circuits.