Standalone gradient measurement of matrix norm for programmable unitary converters

Programmable unitary converters are powerful tools for realizing unitary transformations, advancing fields of computing and communication. The accuracy of these unitary transformations is crucial for maintaining high fidelity in such applications. However, various physical artifacts can impair the accuracy of the synthesized transformations. A commonly employed approach uses the system's gradient to restore accuracy. Although this gradient can indeed be physically measured using external equipment, it leads to a rather complex optical system. In this study, we propose a standalone method for measuring matrix norm gradients, where `standalone' means that no additional optical equipment is needed. This method is based on the mathematical fact that the central difference, which is generally used for the approximation of differentiation, can yield exact differentiation for any unitary transformer. Furthermore, we introduce a new matrix distance that is suitable for optimizing unitary converters which use intensity detectors at the output. Numerical analysis demonstrates that our method exhibits orders of magnitude higher tolerance to measurement noise than prior similar approaches.