Refractive-diffractive micro-optics for permutation interconnects

Refractive and diffractive micro-optics are combined in monolithically fabricated array components for free-space permutation interconnects. Such space-variant optical interconnects are, e.g., of major importance for smart pixel architectures, which are proposed for photonic switching applications in telecommunication and data communication and for more general parallel information processing, for example, of images. The advantages of the considered optical concept and an experimental demonstration of a 2-D perfect shuttle interconnect with 8 x 8 optical channels are described. We also discuss the scaling behavior and the alignment and wavelength tolerances of the interconnect system.