guide photons along optical tracks tagged posts

Tracks called waveguides guide photons in silicon. Spirals of these waveguides are used to generate photons that are routed around the processor circuit.
Credit: Xiaogang Qiang, University of Bristol

Light may be the missing ingredient in making usable quantum silicon computer chips, according to an international study featuring a University of Queensland researcher. The team has engineered a silicon chip that can guide photons along optical tracks, encoding and processing quantum-bits of information – ‘qubits’.

Professor Timothy Ralph from UQ’s Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology said that the use of photons in this way could increase the number and types of tasks that computers can help us with...