A Polish-British team of physicists has constructed and tested a compact, efficient converter capable of modifying the quantum properties of individual photons. The new device should facilitate the construction of complex quantum computers, and in the future may become an important element in global quantum networks, the successors of today’s Internet.
Quantum internet and hybrid quantum computers, built out of subsystems that operate by means of various physical phenomena, are now becoming more than just the stuff of imagination. In an article just published in the journal Nature Photonics, physicists from the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Physics (FUW) and the University of Oxford have unveiled a key element of such systems: an electro-optical device that enables the properties of individual photons to be modified. Unlike existing laboratory constructions, this new device works with previously unattainable efficiency and is at the same time stable, reliable, and compact.
Building an efficient device for modifying the quantum state of individual photons was an exceptionally challenging task, given the fundamental differences between classical and quantum computing.
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