A new blueprint for quantum computing with photons

A new blueprint for quantum computing with photons

Quantum computers promise a step change in computational power for some important problems, such as the simulation of the properties of solid materials and chemical reactions. At a fundamental level, all physical systems behave quantum mechanically, but the quantum mechanical properties needed for quantum computation are extremely fragile. The best way to build a large-scale quantum computer remains an important open research question.

The particle nature of light, embodied in the photon, was the first quantum effect to be discovered. Photons make excellent carriers of quantum information and can form the basis of a quantum computer. But realising this is very difficult and many challenges remain. Great advances have been made in recent years in wave-guide technology, which allows photons to be manipulated and combined in complicated ways inside a silicon chip. While wave-guides allow complicated photonic architectures to be realised, they perform best in a static configuration, and in particular active rerouting of photons is very challenging. Also while photons suffer less from quantum decoherence, a major source of noise in many realisations of quantum computing, they are strongly susceptible to photon loss errors.

In research published recently in Physical Review Letters [1], Dr Dan Browne, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL, his joint PhD student, Mercedes Gimeno Segovia, and colleagues at Imperial College London, proposed an architecture for quantum computing with photons which overcomes several of these problems. Exploiting a phenomenon of statistical graph theory known as percolation, and exploiting state-of-the-art photon measurement techniques, their architecture reduces the active rerouting significantly and is also naturally robust to photon loss errors. It therefore forms the most promising blueprint yet for a photonic quantum computer.

There remains many challenges to overcome before a large scale photonic quantum computer can be built. Ms Gimeno-Segovia, Dr Browne and colleagues are collaborating closely with the experimental group of Prof Jeremy O’Brien, at the Centre for Quantum Photonics at the University of Bristol, to refine the model and bring it towards experimental realisation.

Notes

The research is presented in the following paper:

Mercedes Gimeno-Segovia, Pete Shadbolt, Dan E. Browne, and Terry Rudolph, From Three-Photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger States to Ballistic Universal Quantum Computation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 020502 (2015)

Related links

• London Centre for Nanotechnology
• UCL Quantum Science & Technology Institute

High resolution image

Image credit: Carmel King (www.carmelking.com)

Researcher profiles

• Dan Browne

Science contact

Media contact

Oli Usher
UCL Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences
020 7679 7964
o.usher@ucl.ac.uk