Inverse design of compact multimode cavity couplers

Efficient coupling between on-chip sources and cavities plays a key role in silicon photonics. However, despite the importance of this basic functionality, there are few systematic design tools to simultaneously control coupling between multiple modes in a compact resonator and a single waveguide. Here, we propose a large-scale adjoint optimization approach to produce wavelength-scale waveguide–cavity couplers operating over tunable and broad frequency bands. We numerically demonstrate couplers discovered by this method that can achieve critical, or nearly critical, coupling between multi-ring cavities and a single waveguide at up to six widely separated wavelengths spanning the 560–1500 nm range of interest for on-chip nonlinear optical devices.