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Quantum optics

Enlightened chips

Nature Photonics volume 1, pages 94–95 (2007)Cite this article

Using quantum optics to process data could herald a new era of information technology. With the latest semiconductor source of photons, researchers are paving the way towards this enticing goal.

The ability to integrate electronic circuits into semiconductor microstructures has laid the foundation of modern information and communication technology. Quantum information could bring about a second information revolution, but not until scientists develop the technology needed for microscopic circuits that can be built on a large scale. Researchers from France and Switzerland have now produced an integrated semiconductor source of pairs of single photons1, which are a crucial ingredient for optical quantum information processing. Their advance is a promising step towards chip-based quantum information technologies.

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Figure 1: Parametric down conversion, an important process in quantum optics.
Figure 2: An integrated semiconductor source of photon pairs — the experimental set up from Lanco and colleagues1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Markus Aspelmeyer is a member of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. markus.aspelmeyer@quantum.at,

    Markus Aspelmeyer

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  1. Markus Aspelmeyer
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Aspelmeyer, M. Enlightened chips. Nature Photon 1, 94–95 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2006.90

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2006.90

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