Dynamically controlling optical beams with programmable silicon photonic meshes (Conference Presentation)

We report on the use of programmable silicon photonic meshes of thermally tuneable interferometers to manipulate dynamically guided-wave and free-space optical beams on a chip through arbitrary linear transformations. Several applications are presented, including automatic reconstruction and unscrambling of mixed optical modes; forming and steering of free-space optical beams; coupling of free-space beams from arbitrary directions of arrival to single-mode waveguides; phase front reconstruction and beaming through scattering media. Automatic self-configuration of the meshes is achieved by exploiting built-in transparent monitors, beam labelling and thermal crosstalk cancellation strategies, enabling scalability to photonic meshes with a large number of interferometers.