Multi-purpose silicon chip created for quantum information processing

20 August 2018 An international team of researchers led by the University of Bristol have demonstrated that light can be used to implement a multi-functional quantum processor. This small device can be used as a scientific tool to perform a wide array of quantum information experiments, while at the same time showing the way to how fully functional quantum computers might be engineered from large scale fabrication processes. They did this by engineering a silicon chip that guides single particles of light, called photons in optical tracks called waveguides to encode so-called quantum-bits of information called "qubits". International effort is growing to develop quantum computers as the next step in computing power, to increase the types of tasks that computers can solve for us. In today's desktop computers, super-computers and smartphones, bits take the form of either being a "1" or a "0" and they are the fundamental building block on which all computers currently used in society are based. Quantum computers are instead based on "qubits" that can be in a superposition of the 0 and 1 states. Multiple qubits can also be linked in a special way called quantum entanglement.