Scalable Quantum Photonics Control

A photon is a single particle of light. Quantum photonics, the art and science of manipulating single photons, is an emerging technology which could have far-reaching implications across information and communications technology (ICT): how we see the world, through our sensors; how we communicate; and how we infer, calculate, simulate, design, and think, through our computers.

However, to realise the benefits of quantum photonics, the small systems of today must be scaled up-combined into larger, more complex ones-and this is not straightforward.

Photonic quantum technologies still hold all the promise they did three years ago when the first phase of this project was launched, and we are closing in on the scalable underpinnings which will unlock this promise. Since the first phase began, due to our own work and the work of others, the scale of the challenge of real-time integrated control of quantum photonics has become clear.

In this next phase, our team will focus sharply on realising the key real-time integrated quantum photonic control functionality: feedforward. This capability is both an enormous challenge and is one of the few remaining barriers to unlocking large-scale quantum photonics. Without feedforward, linear quantum photonics is limited to a subspace useless for universal quantum computation.

This project will develop the electronic control tools to allow large-scale photonics to correct manufacturing errors, adapt to a changing environment, ignore cross-talk, and respond faster than light speed. This potent combination of control functions and techniques could finally unlock the promise of quantum photonics for information processing, and ultimately deliver quantum photonics for scale.