Analytical level set fabrication constraints for inverse design

Inverse design methods produce nanophotonic devices with arbitrary geometries that show high efficiencies as well as novel functionalities. Ensuring fabricability during optimization of these unrestricted device geometries is a major challenge for these design methods. In this work, we construct a fabrication constraint penalty function for level set geometry representations of these devices. This analytical penalty function limits both the gap size and boundary curvature of a device. We incorporate this penalty in a fully automated optical design flow using a quasi-Newton optimization method. The performance of our design method is evaluated by designing a series of waveguide demultiplexers (WDM) and mode converters with various footprints and minimum feature sizes. Finally, we design and experimentally characterize three WDMs with a 80 nm, 120 nm and 160 nm feature size.