Orthogonality of Diffractive Deep Neural Networks

Abstract: Several laws are found for the Diffractive Deep Neural Networks (D2NN). They reveal the inner product of any two light fields in D2NN is invariant and the D2NN act as a unitary transformation for optical fields. If the output intensities of the two inputs are separated spatially, the input fields must be orthogonal. These laws imply that the D2NN is not only suitable for the classification of general objects but also more suitable for applications aim to the optical orthogonal modes. Additionally, our simulation shows D2NN do well in applications like mode conversion, mode multiplexer, and optical mode recognition.