Errors and losses impact on planar integrated photonic circuits fidelity

Every manufacturing or synthesis process suffers from possible errors or inaccuracies. Thus, this article presents a theoretical study on how such imperfections affect the efficiency of an planar integrated photonic circuit. Three sources of error were analyzed: absorption and scattering phenomena, inaccuracies in the directional couplers physical dimensions and uncertainties in the phase shifters implementation. As a result, graphs that indicate the behaviour of the photonic circuit efficiency, described by a quantity called fidelity, in function of the source of errors were obtained. These graphs allow to deduce scenarios where, even under the action of such imperfections, its fidelity still presents high values.