Programmable photonic arrays based on microelectromechanical elements with femtowatt-level standby power consumption

Programmable photonic integrated circuits offer exciting opportunities for optoelectronic signal processing, computing and communications in a number of emerging applications in classical and quantum photonics. In this work, we show the array-level demonstration of tunable couplers and phase shifters with capacitive electrostatic microelectromechanical actuators in a recirculating mesh network. The overall fabrication process is compatible with the conventional wafer-level passive silicon photonics platform. Extremely low unit-level standby power consumption of