The microprocessor inside a computer is a single multipurpose chip that has revolutionised people’s life, allowing them to use one machine to surf the web, check emails and keep track of finances.
Now, researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in Japan, have pulled off the same feat for light in the quantum world by developing an optical chip that can process photons in an infinite number of ways.
It’s a major step forward in creating a quantum computer to solve problems such as designing new drugs, superfast database searches, and performing otherwise intractable mathematics that aren’t possible for super computers.
The fully reprogrammable chip brings together a multitude of existing quantum experiments and can realise a plethora of future protocols that have not even been conceived yet, marking a new era of research for quantum scientists and engineers at the cutting edge of quantum technologies. The work is published in the journal Science on 14 August.
Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour, scientists have understood nature through the behaviour of light. In the modern age of research, scientists are striving to understand nature at the quantum level and to engineer and control quantum states of light and matter.
A major barrier in testing new theories for quantum science and quantum computing is the time and resources needed to build new experiments, which are typically extremely demanding due to the notoriously fragile nature of quantum systems.
This result shows a step change for experiments with photons, and what the future looks like for quantum technologies.
Dr Anthony Laing, who led the project, said: “A whole field of research has essentially been put onto a single optical chip that is easily controlled. The implications of the work go beyond the huge resource savings. Now anybody can run their own experiments with photons, much like they operate any other piece of software on a computer. They no longer need to convince a physicist to devote many months of their life to painstakingly build and conduct a new experiment.”
The team demonstrated the chip’s unique capabilities by re-programming it to rapidly perform a number of different experiments, each of which would previously have taken many months to build.
Bristol PhD student Jacques Carolan, one of the researchers, added: “Once we wrote the code for each circuit, it took seconds to re-programme the chip, and milliseconds for the chip to switch to the new experiment. We carried out a year’s worth of experiments in a matter of hours. What we’re really excited about is using these chips to discover new science that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Read more: New optical chip lights up the race for quantum computer
The Latest on: Quantum optics lab-on-a-chip
[google_news title=”” keyword=”quantum optics lab-on-a-chip” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Quantum optics lab-on-a-chip
- Ultra-Pure Silicon Chip Sparks a Quantum Computing Revolutionon May 7, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Researchers at the Universities of Melbourne and Manchester have invented a breakthrough technique for manufacturing highly purified silicon that brings powerful quantum computers a big step closer. T ...
- New super-pure silicon chip opens path to powerful quantum computerson May 6, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Lead author Ravi Acharya, a joint University of Manchester/University of Melbourne Cookson Scholar, said the great advantage of silicon chip quantum computing ... fabrication lab, tuned to a ...
- Quantum Computing Newson April 28, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The breakthrough opens up the possibility of integrating millions of these qubits on a single chip using mature ... The Big Quantum Chill: Scientists Modify Common Lab Refrigerator to Cool ...
- Demonstration of heralded three-photon entanglement on a photonic chipon April 24, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Employing this method, the researchers were able to this state from a single-photon source in a photonic chip. Their work ... development of large-scale optical quantum computers that rely on ...
- Chinese team makes quantum leap in chip design with new light sourceon April 20, 2024 at 6:23 am
"The gallium nitride platform offers promising prospects for advancing photonic quantum chips in the near future." Quantum optics expert ... promise for all-on-chip quantum photonic integrated ...
- Quantum Systems: Potential Improvements and Future Developmentson April 16, 2024 at 1:20 pm
Study lead author, Dr Sarah Thomas, is seen working in the quantum optics lab. (Credit: Thomas Angus / Imperial College London) Going forward, the team aspires to further enhance the system by ...
- Crucial connection for ‘quantum internet’ made for the first timeon April 16, 2024 at 8:45 am
For the first time, researchers have created such a system that interfaces these two key components, and uses regular optical ... lab at Imperial College London. While independent quantum dots ...
- Quantum optics articles from across Nature Portfolioon April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
A promising strategy for scaling trapped-ion-based quantum ... optical waveguides to deliver light to numerous ions at multiple sites. Here, the authors. optically address three ions using on ...
- A method to accurately center quantum dots within photonic chipson March 20, 2024 at 7:13 am
Devices that capture the brilliant light from millions of quantum dots, including chip-scale lasers and optical amplifiers ... "Our work is a leap ahead in this lab-to-fab transition." ...
- Nanophotonics – harnessing light at the nanoscaleon November 13, 2023 at 12:56 pm
Artist’ concept of 3D silicon processor chip with optical IO layer featuring on-chip nanophotonic network. (© IBM) Plasmonic nanostructures and quantum dots facilitate ultrasensitive biological and ...
via Bing News