General purpose quantum computers require millions of physical qubits, thus requiring an underlying qubit technology that can be manufactured at scale. Photons make great qubits, they are cheap to produce, resilient to noise and the only known option for quantum communication. Most crucially, they can be efficiently manipulated with silicon photonics, an intrinsically scalable and manufacturable platform in which all the fundamental quantum gates can be implemented.
It is increasingly accepted that all commercially useful quantum computing applications require error-correction and therefore at least 1 million physical qubits. The manufacturing capability and expertise of the semiconductor industry are needed to deliver a commercially useful quantum computer on any reasonable time or money scale. In this talk, we will show how unique technology in the areas of silicon photonics and quantum system architecture enable the path to manufacturability and scalability of a fault-tolerant, general-purpose 1-milliion qubit quantum computer.
Quantum computing promises to transform almost every industry, and as such there is currently a huge industrial and academic effort to realize the world’s first useful quantum computer, requiring ~1,000,000 physical qubits. Of the various technological approaches being pursued, photons are particularly appealing due to their low noise properties, ease of manipulation and compatibility with existing and established CMOS manufacturing techniques – through silicon photonics. In this talk I will outline the photonic approach to quantum computing, introducing the integrated quantum photonic circuit and highlighting routes to a scalable quantum technology platform.
Quantum computing is one of the grand challenges of the 21st century and promises to transform almost every industry. As quantum computing technology exits the academic research phase into manufacturing, the goal is not to build single, unique qubits, but millions of interconnected, identical qubits capable of performing fully error corrected, general purpose calculations. Photon-based qubits offer a path to such a general-purpose machine by leveraging the mature silicon photonics high-volume manufacturing ecosystem. Creating quantum devices from silicon photonics components requires patterning innovation to bring leading-edge nanolithography to near macroscopic scale, a unique challenge for an industry where the future relies on progressive device shrink.
Quantum computing is one of the grand challenges of the 21st century and promises to transform almost every industry. As quantum computing technology exits the academic research phase into manufacturing, the goal is not to build single, unique qubits, but millions of interconnected, identical qubits capable of performing fully error corrected, general purpose calculations. Photon-based qubits offer a path to such a general-purpose machine by leveraging the mature silicon photonics high-volume manufacturing ecosystem. Creating quantum devices from silicon photonics components requires patterning innovation to bring leading-edge nanolithography to near macroscopic scale, a unique challenge for an industry where the future relies on progressive device shrink.
Whilst holding great promise for low noise, ease of operation and networking, useful photonic quantum computing has been precluded by the need for beyond-state-of-the-art components, manufactured by the millions. Here we introduce a manufacturable platform for quantum computing with photons. We benchmark a set of monolithically-integrated silicon photonics-based modules to generate, manipulate, network, and detect photonic qubits, demonstrating dual-rail photonic qubits with
99.98%±0.01% state preparation and measurement fidelity, Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference between independent photon sources with
99.50%±0.25% visibility, two-qubit fusion with
99.22%±0.12% fidelity, and a chip-to-chip qubit interconnect with
99.72%±0.04% fidelity, not accounting for loss. In addition, we preview a selection of next generation technologies, demonstrating low-loss silicon nitride waveguides and components, fabrication-tolerant photon sources, high-efficiency photon-number-resolving detectors, low-loss chip-to-fiber coupling, and barium titanate electro-optic phase shifters.
Quantum computing is the grand challenge of the 21st century and is poised to revolutionizes our daily lives on a nearly unfathomable level. To truly understand the impact, we must first build a universal, fully error corrected machine capable of exploring the application space envisioned by both academic and industry. Numerous pathways have been identified and demonstrated to fabricate single, unique qubits using a myriad of platforms (superconducting, ions, nanoparticles, photons, etc…). However, it is now widely accepted that a truly useful quantum computer will require millions of interconnected, identical qubits to perform fully error corrected, general purpose calculations. To that end, photon-based qubits offer a path to such a general-purpose machine by leveraging the mature silicon photonics high-volume manufacturing ecosystem. Creating quantum devices from silicon photonics components requires patterning innovation to bring leading-edge nanolithography to near macroscopic scale, a unique challenge for an industry where the future relies on progressive device shrink.