Programmable photonics is a subfield of photonics that studies the development of photonic circuits for computation. It encompasses passive computation, which sculpts light in a way that performs a certain computation,^[1] and the more ambitious, futuristic active computation (like in semiconductors).^[2]

Programmable photonics has received increasing interest from the defense, virtual reality, and augmented reality sectors, among others.^[3][4][5]

Optical metasurfaces (OMs) are widely considered the current state of the art in passive programmable photonics,^[6] making the pragmatic decision of sticking to a 2D layer due to the difficulty of fabricating nanoscale 3D structures.^[7] Significant research effort is devoted to fabricating nanoscale, complex 3D structures more efficiently and precisely.^[8][9]