Simphony Documentation

Simphony allows you to define photonic circuits, then run fast simulations on them, all in Python.

• Simphony is free and open-source

• Runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux

• Uses a SPICE-like method for defining photonic circuits

• Subnetwork growth algorithms, giving 20x speedup over other photonic modeling software

• Includes libraries for circuit components (known as models)

• Provides a simple framework for defining new models

To install Simphony, simply use the following in a Python 3 environment:

pip install simphony

There are also prebuilt releases available on GitHub.

Note

We recommend installing two libraries, matplotlib and SiPANN, alongside Simphony. Matplotlib provides a way to visualize the results from your simulations, and SiPANN provides additional models for use in your circuits. View the links for installation instructions and find out more.

To get started using Simphony, check out Introduction to Simphony. Tutorials and API references are accessible through the sidebar navigation.

Simphony is primarily developed and maintained by members of the CamachoLab at Brigham Young University. Feedback is welcome: if you find errors or have suggestions for the Simphony project, let us know by raising an issue on Github. If you want to contribute, even better! See Contributing to Simphony to learn how.

Citing this work

S. Ploeg, H. Gunther and R. M. Camacho, “Simphony: An Open-Source Photonic Integrated Circuit Simulation Framework,” in Computing in Science & Engineering, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 65-74, 1 Jan.-Feb. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MCSE.2020.3012099.