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2026

Hyperspectral Photonic Integrated Circuit Based on Recursive Reverse Design

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The team of Lin Chang and Qi-Fan Yang at Peking University has proposed a hyperspectral photonic integrated circuit composed of a chain of interconnected reflective nodes. The core idea is to introduce partial reflectivity, thereby leveraging transmission–reflection interference within each component node. This architecture broadens the measurable delay distribution and exhibits superlinear growth in complexity. The authors implement these circuits through a recursive inverse‑design workflow that jointly exploits node geometry and circuit topology to maximize spectral complexity. Experiments demonstrate that a single waveguide containing 11 reflective nodes can achieve a level of complexity comparable to at least a 100‑stage cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer. These circuit arrays can reconstruct spectra with subpicometer resolution over an 800‑nm bandwidth. Such performance bridges the gap between optical and microwave frequencies, enabling simultaneous monitoring of both optical and radio signals within a single device.

The research findings were published in Nature Communications on August 11, 2026, under the title “Hyper-spectral photonic integrated circuits based on recursive inverse design.”