Near-optimal decomposition of unitary matrices using phase masks and the discrete Fourier transform

Universal multiport interferometers (UMIs) have emerged as a key tool for performing arbitrary linear transformations on optical modes, enabling precise control over the state of light in essential applications of classical and quantum information processing such as neural networks and boson sampling. While UMI architectures based on Mach–Zehnder interferometer networks are well established, alternative approaches that involve interleaving fixed multichannel mixing layers and phase masks have recently gained interest due to their high robustness to losses and fabrication errors. However, these approaches currently lack optimal analytical methods to compute design parameters with a low optical depth. In this work, we introduce a constructive decomposition of unitary matrices using a sequence of 2 N +5 phase masks interleaved with 2 N +4 discrete Fourier transform matrices. This decomposition can be leveraged to design universal interferometers based on phase masks and multimode interference couplers, implementing a discrete Fourier transform, offering an analytical alternative to conventional numerical-optimization-based designs and reducing by a factor of 3 the previous best-known analytical methods.