PICasso is an AI‑enabled framework that converts natural‑language specifications into manufacturable silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) through a structured pipeline of NL → YAML → GDS, PDK‑aware knowledge injection, automated placement and routing, DRC/LVS validation, and SAX‑based photonic simulation. The authors introduce PIC‑Set, a benchmark of 36 parameterized PIC design tasks, and evaluate several large language models (LLMs) using new metrics such as structural and functional Spec@k, optimization efficiency, and robustness. Across the benchmark, PICasso markedly improves specification satisfaction, achieving up to 92.7% structural Spec@3 and 52% functional Spec@3, while reducing mean insertion loss from 4.98 dB to 3.25 dB through simulation‑guided optimization.
By Deepak Vungarala, Deniz Najafi, Abdulrahman Aljoudi, Zahra Ghanaatian, Navid Khoshavi, Gourav Datta, Arman Roohi, Mahdi Nikdast, Shaahin Angizi
The review examines how Large Language Models (LLMs) enhance nanophotonics design by providing semantic interfaces, code generation, and tool orchestration. It traces the evolution from classical neural networks to transformer-based models and categorizes LLM applications into surrogate models that map structure to spectrum and agentic systems that generate code and orchestrate simulations for closed-loop optimization. The article also highlights potential cross-disciplinary uses of LLMs in materials science and wireless communications, and envisions future multimodal foundation models that actively collaborate in autonomous scientific discovery.
By Huanshu Zhang, Kegeng Tang, Lei Kang, Sawyer D. Campbell, Zihao Wang, Douglas H. Werner
Metasurfaces have revolutionized the development of photonic devices by enabling unprecedented precision in light manipulation. However, their design processes are often constrained by computationally...
arXiv:2604. 01480v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Metasurface inverse design can realize complex optical functionality, but turning a target optical response into executable optimization code still requires substantial expertise in computational electromagnetics and solver-specific software engineering.
By Yi Huang, Bowen Zheng, Yunxi Dong, Hong Tang, Huan Zhao, S. M. Rakibul Hasan Shawon, Hualiang Zhang
arXiv:2608. 01791v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The rapid development of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is shifting the design flow from traditional graphical user interface (GUI)-based methods to script-based methods for higher flexibility, portability, and maintainability.
By Xiaohan Jiang, Zeyu Li, Wei Zhang, Jiang Xu
arXiv:2607. 23469v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs) can combine high-power operation with narrow-divergence surface emission, but optimizing coupled parameters requires costly full-wave simulations.
By Longying Wen, Feiyang Wu, Jinglin Yu, Chongxian Yuan, Renjie Li, Zhaoyu Zhang
arXiv:2605. 22097v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Photonic quantum computing is a promising platform for scalable quantum machine learning, but designing effective hybrid architectures remains challenging under hardware and optimization constraints.
By Farah Elnakhal, Alberto Marchisio, Nouhaila Innan, Gabriel Falcao, Muhammad Shafique
The paper presents a method for training single‑step neural surrogates that can handle wave‑scattering inverse problems with tens of thousands of controllable variables. By dynamically generating training examples through gradient ascent and using a replay dataset with normalization, the authors achieve a surrogate that accurately models two‑dimensional wave scattering for up to 41,772 variables and can generalize to over 3 million variables without retraining. The surrogate demonstrates comparable or better performance than traditional FDTD simulations for large‑scale forward simulations and inverse design of photonic devices, achieving speedups up to 26.5×.
arXiv:2607. 07682v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The inverse design of physical systems governed by partial differential equations is computationally demanding due to the high dimensionality and non-convexity of design spaces.
By Xiangming Huang, Guannan Zhang, Lu Lu, Rapha\"el Pestourie
arXiv:2606. 06515v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Transformer-based networks have emerged as prominent AI models with state-of-the-art performance, which potentially pave the way toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
By Rachmad Vidya Wicaksana Putra, Solomon Micheal Serunjogi, Mahmoud Rasras, Muhammad Shafique
TO-Agents is a multi‑agent AI framework that translates natural‑language design intent into iterative topology optimization. It converts a human problem description into solver inputs, runs the optimizer, renders 3D topologies, and employs a judge agent to critique and revise results using multiview vision‑language reasoning. Evaluated on a cantilever beam and a phone‑stand design, the system achieved preference‑aligned designs in 60% of trials, outperforming an ablated pipeline by up to six times and enabling end‑to‑end intent‑to‑prototype design with additive manufacturing.
By Isabella A. Stewart, Hongrui Chen, Faez Ahmed
arXiv:2508. 20134v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Programming quantum circuits at the OpenQASM level is essential for achieving hardware-aware optimization and reliable execution on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices, yet it remains challenging due to the need for domain-specific planning, iterative code synthesis, and low-level calibration.
By Zhenxiao Fu, Lei Jiang, Yilun Xu, Gang Huang, Fan Chen