Pure light generated for the calculation of the future

Very pure light was obtained for the calculation systems of the future, very fast and effective, based on quantum computers to analyze complex systems such as those with which meteorological forecasts or town planning are concerned, up to the design of drugs. It was possible thanks to the device born from the collaboration between the University of Trento and the British one of Bristol, described in the journal Nature Communications. For the device, which has shown to generate a very large amount of light particles (photons), a joint patent has been filed by the two universities.

"We have shown that our innovative device generates super pure photons", observe Massimo Borghi, Stefano Signorini and Lorenzo Pavesi, from the University of Trento, authors of the article with Stefano Paesani, Alexandre Mainos and Anthony Laing of the University of Bristol.

The device is the key to tackle many of the typical aspects of complex systems with unconventional calculation procedures, such as those underlying many natural processes, where it is difficult to identify rules among the millions of elements that come into play with dynamics that not even the most powerful supercomputers are currently able to solve. Quantum computers allow instead to reverse the classical rules of calculus and, with the help of quantum mechanics, they will be able to solve problems considered today impossible.

The device is a chip made on an integrated silicon circuit, which functions as a source of light particles that correspond to units of quantum information, the qubits (quantum bits). "The simulations tell us that with about 150 ultra pure and indistinguishable photons - Borghi observes - we will be able to fully exploit the computational capacity of quantum computers by going beyond those of a classic computer by several orders of magnitude, thus entering the famous regime of quantum supremacy".