Implementation of optical perfect-shuffle module

A novel method of implementing the perfect shuffle is presented that is lossless and suitable for use in a system that interconnects 2-D arrays of devices. Based on a split and interlace method, it relies on a knife-edge mirror to split an array into two and a striped patterned mirror to recombine the two halves. An anamorphic telescope subsequently corrects the difference in pitch in the two axes resulting from the images split and recombine operation. Low power loss, equivalence between input and output plane dimensions, and expansion to an arbitrary size of array are essential features of the perfect shuffle. The perfect shuffle has also been optically designed to minimize aberrations, but interferometric measurements show that the predicted high performance is not achievable in practice. The performance of the cylindrical lens also limits the scalability of the design to large array sizes.