{
  "abstract": "Phase fluctuations between optical inputs limit programmable photonic processors because their output powers depend on coherent interference. We study the phase-drift penalty that arises when sine and cosine quadratures are measured sequentially rather than simultaneously. The analysis is motivated by measurements from an eight-mode programmable photonic processor, including 35 free-running recordings of 300 s acquired at approximately 125 samples per second per channel. These recordings provide an empirical route for estimating the phase-increment variance at a selected reconfiguration interval. The estimate is defined at the time of the second measurement. For fixed quadrature order, perturbation of the atan2 reconstruction gives $e_{C\\to S}=-δ_τ\\sin^2ϕ_0+O(δ_τ^2)$ and $e_{S\\to C}=-δ_τ\\cos^2ϕ_0+O(δ_τ^2)$. Writing $Q_τ=\\operatorname{Var}(δ_τ)$, uniform phase averaging gives the first-order drift mean-square error $3Q_τ/8$. A phase-predicted ordering rule measures the locally less informative quadrature first and the more informative quadrature second. Its uniform first-order penalty is $(3/8-1/π)Q_τ$, which is 84.9 percent below the fixed-order value. We also derive an increment-aware estimator from a local state-space model. Marginalizing the unknown phase increment increases the variance of a stale phase observation by $Q_τ$, reducing its Fisher information from $I$ to $I/(1+IQ_τ)$. For ideal balanced Poisson detection, the Fisher information of each quadrature equals its detected signal-photon number. This yields dimensionless architecture boundaries in spatial information and phase-increment variance. Nonlinear Monte Carlo simulations validate the perturbative laws, quantify robustness to prediction error, and compare simultaneous, fixed-order, increment-aware, and adaptive receivers under a common noise model.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2608.02249",
  "author_total": 3,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Gökhan Elmas"
    },
    {
      "name": "Igor A. Litvin"
    },
    {
      "name": "Janis Nötzel"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3h39jz8sd7yq7.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2608.02249",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "3h39jz8sd7yq7",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.02249",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.optics"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7172383202",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.02249",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-19",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3h39jz8sd7yq7.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:30:52Z",
      "native_id": "2608.02249",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.02249"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.optics",
      "subfield": "optics-photonics"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Phase-Drift Limits and Adaptive Quadrature Readout in Programmable Photonic Processors",
  "title_text": "Phase-Drift Limits and Adaptive Quadrature Readout in Programmable Photonic Processors",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:33:41Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3h39jz8sd7yq7",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}