Photons as qubits

By Hamish Johnston at the APS March Meeting in Dallas

I spent most of this morning filming 60 second interview spots with top physicists, so I haven’t really got into the swing of things in terms of sessions. Those spots, by the way, should be available on physicsworld.com sometime soon.

I did manage to see a session this morning about silicon qubits. One of the speakers was Jeremy O’Brien of the University of Bristol. Jeremy’s talk was slightly off-topic because he spoke about integrated silicon-based devices that make use of photon as qubits. You can read more about Jeremy’s devices here.

His talk included a nice slide about applications of photon qubits. Quantum metrology is one application that fascinates me. It could be used to do everything from making better optical discs to helping physicists detect gravitational waves.