A team of experts headed by the Australian National University (ANU) is hard at work developing a data superhighway for the quantum internet. They plan to use light particles as data storage devices since they can hoard information in vast quantities, according to ANU Associate Professor Andrey Sukhorukov, leader of the research team at the Nonlinear Physics Center of the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
“The light particles move really fast so, for quality-control purposes, we’ve developed a way to monitor and measure them along quantum circuits, which are like superhighways for the light particles to travel along,” says Sukhorukov.
Working with light particles presented the researchers with particular design challenge—taking their measurements interfere with the quantum circuit’s operations, explains Kai Wang, Ph.D. scholar at the Nonlinear Physics Center. What was the workaround? The ANU team developed a series of detectors along specified regions.
“We guided light particles to two parallel paths, like two lanes on a highway: one lane has a faster speed limit than the other one, and light particles can freely change their lanes,” says Wang. “Along both lanes there are several detectors to simultaneously check exactly how many light particles were passing these detectors at the same time.”
An artist’s impression of the light particle detection system can be seen below (Figure 1).
Overtime, the researchers’ understandings strengthened as light particles traveled into and out of these detection zones. Wang says a few light particles were lost during this process, but in the end, the transmitted light particles’ quantum state was left unaltered.
“Our detection system can be built into a large, integrated network of quantum circuits, to help monitor light particles in real time,” concludes Wang.
A team at Germany’s University of Rostock was in charge of feasibility tests using custom-designed, fabricated optical circuits, according to ANU.
Read the article, “Inline detection and reconstruction of multiphoton quantum states,” published in Optica to learn more.
