Scientists one step closer to developing ultra-high-speed quantum computers

Researchers were recently able to integrate core circuits of quantum teleportation on a single photonic chip, which will help in developing ultra-high-speed quantum computers and strengthening the security of communication.

The international team of scientists from the universities of Bristol, Tokyo, Southampton and NTT Device Technology Laboratories successfully integrated the core circuits that generate and detect quantum entanglement. One of the most important tasks was to successfully enable quantum teleportation, which transfered qubits from one photon to another.

However, the conventional experimental implementation of quantum teleportation fills a laboratory and requires hundreds of optical instruments painstakingly aligned, a far cry from the scale and robustness of device required in a modern day computer or handheld device.

While there has been significant progress in current computing technology, its performance was now reaching the fundamental limit of classical physics. On the other hand, it has been predicted that principles of quantum mechanics will enable the development of ultra-secure quantum communication and ultra-powerful quantum computers, overcoming the limit of current technologies.

One of the most important steps in achieving this was to establish technologies for quantum teleportation (transferring signals of quantum bits in photons from a sender to a receiver at a distance). The implementation of teleportation on to a micro-chip was an important building block unlocking the potential for practical quantum technologies.