Selection of Filters for Photonic Crystal Spectrometer Using Domain-Aware Evolutionary Algorithms

Abstract: This work addresses the critical challenge of optimal filter selection for a novel trace gas measurement device. This device uses photonic crystal filters to retrieve trace gas concentrations prone to photon and read noise. The filter selection directly influences accuracy and precision of the gas retrieval and therefore is a crucial performance driver. We formulate the problem as a stochastic combinatorial optimization problem and develop a simulator mimicking gas retrieval with noise. The objective function for selecting filters reducing retrieval error is minimized by the employed metaheuristics, that represent various families of optimizers. We aim to improve the found top-performing algorithms using our novel distance-driven extensions, that employ metrics on the space of filter selections. This leads to a novel adaptation of the UMDA algorithm, we call UMDA-U-PLS-Dist, equipped with one of the proposed distance metrics as the most efficient and robust solver among the considered ones. Analysis of filter sets produced by this method reveals that filters with relatively smooth transmission profiles but containing high contrast improve the device performance. Moreover, the top-performing obtained solution shows significant improvement compared to the baseline.