Quantum Processing Scales Up and Bursts Out from Theory to Reality at University of Copenhagen

(Cordis.europa.eu) Peter Lodahl, Head of the Quantum Photonics Group at the University of Copenhagen, has been observing the steady materialisation of quantum hardware building blocks for three years , and he’s clearly optimistic about the future. With every new building block, the world gets closer to the first generation of quantum computing, communication and precision sensing devices.
Lodahl has actually been much more than an observer. He also supervises a group of about 30 scientists working on quantum photonics technology.
“Our group has specialised in developing deterministic and coherent single-photon sources and photon-emitter interfaces of sufficiently high quality to be scaled up,” he explains. “We now leverage this know-how and technology by applying photonic resources in advanced quantum-information processing. We are heading towards photonic quantum simulations and a quantum photonic neural network, which requires hybrid interfacing of our technology with commercially available advanced photonic circuits (PICs). This is a key development currently taking place.”
One of the key projects hosted by Lodahl is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship named VLS-QPP. The project aims to develop the next generation of quantum optical technology. It does so through symbiotic development of hardware and algorithms, and by using the silicon photonics platform.
Critical to the success of VLS-QPP is the close interplay between theory and experiment. “The hardware we develop is only as good as the algorithms and protocols we have to run on it,” adds Carolan. “We have therefore developed new methods to control such large-scale quantum photonic systems, and an entirely new suite of applications in the emerging field of quantum machine learning.”