Programmable optical quantum computer arrives late, steals the show

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Excuse me a moment-I am going to be bombastic, over excited, and possibly annoying. The race is run, and we have a winner in the future of quantum computing. IBM, Google, and everyone else can turn in their quantum computing cards and take up knitting.

OK, the situation isn't that cut and dried yet, but a recent paper has described a fully programmable, chip-based optical quantum computer. That idea presses all my buttons, and until someone restarts me, I will talk of nothing else.

Love the light

There is no question that quantum computing has come a long way in 20 years. Two decades ago, optical quantum technology looked like the way forward. Storing information in a photon's quantum states (as an optical qubit) was easy. Manipulating those states with standard optical elements was also easy, and measuring the outcome was relatively trivial. Quantum computing was just a new application of existing quantum experiments, and those experiments had shown the ease of use of the systems and gave optical technologies the early advantage.

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