Scientists have made an important step toward developing computers advanced enough to simulate complex natural phenomena at the quantum level. While these types of simu­lations are too cumbersome or outright impossible for classical computers to handle, photonics-based quantum computing systems could provide a solution. A team of researchers from the University of Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences developed a new chip-scale optical quantum simu­lation system that could help make such a system feasible.

Quing Lin’s team ran the simu­lations in a synthetic space that mimics the physical world by controlling the frequency of quantum entangled photons as time elapses. This approach differs from the traditional photonics-based computing methods in which the paths of photons are controlled, and also drastically reduces the physical footprint and resource require­ments. “For the first time, we have been able to produce a quantum-correlated synthetic crystal,” says Lin. “Our approach significantly extends the dimen­sions of the synthetic space, enabling us to perform simulations of several quantum-scale phenomena such as random walks of quantum entangled photons.”

The researchers say that this system can serve as a basis for more intricate simulations in the future. “Though the systems being simulated are well understood, this proof-of-principle experiment demons­trates the power of this new approach for scaling up to more complex simu­lations and computation tasks, something we are very excited to investigate in the future,” says Usman Javid. (Source: U. Rochester)

Reference: U. A. Javid et al.: Chip-scale simulations in a quantum-correlated synthetic space, Nat. Phot., online 22 June 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01236-7

Link: Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, USA