Science
NTT Research-led Paper in Nature Physics Advances Programmable Photonics with Novel Lithium Niobate-based Waveguide
SUNNYVALE, Calif., December 08, 2025--NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT (TY;9432), today announced that members of its Physics & Informatics (PHI) Lab, in collaboration with Cornell University and Stanford University, have demonstrated a photonic processor whose refractive index can be rewritten across a two-dimensional waveguide to exercise virtually arbitrary control over the propagation of light waves and perform machine-learning computations. Built around a lithium niobate slab waveguide
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[{"type":"image","alt":"Figure 1: (A) The fundamental unit of an artificial neural network—a layer—transforms an input vector into an output vector via a trainable matrix multiplication. (B) Analogous to a neural-network layer, the 2D-programmable waveguide transforms an input optical field encoding information (here, the pixels of an image of the digit ‘4’) into an output optical field (here, the probability distribution of which digit is shown). (C) shows the wave propagation through the programmable lithium niobate slab waveguide.","displaySize":"","headline":null,"caption":"Figure 1: (A) The fundamental unit of an artificial neural network—a layer—transforms an input vector into an output vector via a trainable matrix multiplication. (B) Analogous to a neural-network layer, the 2D-programmable waveguide transforms an input optical field encoding information (here, the pixels of an image of the digit ‘4’) into an output optical field (here, the probability distribution of which digit is shown). (C) shows the wave propagation through the programmable lithium niobate slab waveguide.","credit":null,"className":"","disableSlideshowImg":false,"size":{"original":{"width":480,"height":237,"url":"https://media.zenfs.com/en/business-wire.com/6292beef232204d1dae41ee03ab36492"},"resized":{"url":"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/l1Ymg49YLtqbBIT0C.Vz5A--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTQ3NDtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/business-wire.com/6292beef232204d1dae41ee03ab36492","width":480,"height":237}},"lazy":false},{"type":"image","alt":"","displaySize":"","headline":null,"caption":"","credit":null,"className":"","disableSlideshowImg":false,"size":{"original":{"width":4053,"height":1008,"url":"https://media.zenfs.com/en/business-wire.com/6dd6042bf953e159c086fdb82be4991f"},"resized":{"url":"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/eoAu9P_BUgU.hTzJ3eCCTQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTIzOTtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/business-wire.com/6dd6042bf953e159c086fdb82be4991f","width":960,"height":239},"lightbox":{"url":"https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/hPjVB4UPL8DYCDDCOHK1vw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI0MDA7aD01OTY7Y2Y9d2VicA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/business-wire.com/6dd6042bf953e159c086fdb82be4991f","width":1200,"height":298}}},{"type":"text","content":"Collaborative research demonstrates unprecedented degree of contro...