A tiny camera lens that’s 100 times thinner than a human hair may serve as the missing connection between networks and quantum computers.

Developed by a team at Australian National University (ANU), the device comprises of a silicon film with millions of nano-structures. Together, they create a metasurface that controls light better than traditional technologies. Once realized, the lens could facilitate fast and efficient quantum information transfer.

According to the researchers, the lens could enable transmission and detect data encoded in quantum light due to its high-transparent qualities.

“It is the first of its kind to image several quantum particles of light at once, enabling the observation of their spooky behavior with ultra-sensitive cameras,” says Associate Professor Andrey Sukhorukov, who led the research at the Nonlinear Physics Center of the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

Kai Wang, a Nonlinear Physics Center Ph.D. scholar who helped throughout the entire project and is pictured below, highlighted one particular design difficulty—creating quantum technologies that are portable.

“Our device offers a compact, integrated, and stable solution for manipulating quantum light. It is fabricated with a similar kind of manufacturing technique used by Intel and NVIDIA for computer chips.” says Wang.

The research is outlined in the article, “Quantum metasurface for multiphoton interference and state reconstruction,” published in Science.