Wherever you fall on the quantum skeptic spectrum, there’s no denying that the technology’s potential is fascinating. Don’t worry, we’ll admit we don’t quite understand it yet either, but the founders of QuiX Quantum do.

Together with scientists from the Leibniz University of Hanover, the team has demonstrated a fully integrated quantum light source on a chip smaller than the size of a one-euro coin.

The study, titled “Fully on-chip photonic turnkey quantum source for entangled qubit/qudit state generation”, for your information, was published in Nature photonics this week. The results could reportedly be a game-changer for technologies like quantum computing.

Photonics offers temperature benefits

Quantum photonics is a field of research that investigates the behavior of light and its interactions with matter at the quantum level. Quantum light sources produce photons that can be used as quantum bits or qubits. One of the main advantages of photonics over superconductor approaches is that it is compatible with room temperature operating conditions.

However, most sources are external laser systems, making them bulky and non-reproducible, making them unsuitable for use outside the lab or larger scale production. Integrated or on-chip sources are becoming increasingly popular because they are more compact and stable.

A fully integrated light source, as demonstrated by scientists at QuiX and Leibniz University, will allow all phases of Quantum Information Processing (QIP) to be performed on a single chip, which will lead to greater stability and scalability of the technology.

Plug-and-play photonics solutions

QuiX Quantum was founded in January 2019. Since then, the company has raised more than €5.5 million in funding and is already the European market leader in quantum computing hardware based on photonics. They sold their first quantum processors in 2021 and are building 8- and 64-qubit Universal Quantum Computers worth €14 million for the German Aerospace Center.

The company says its goal is “the continued disruption of quantum computing with our high-tech, scalable, future-proof, plug-and-play integrated photonics solutions.” The recent breakthrough couldn’t have come at a better time. The EU has just launched a €19 million project to help quantum startups transition from lab to market.

Earlier this year, QuiX Quantum won the prestigious Prism Award for its 20-mode Quantum Photonic Processor. This award is known as the “Oscars of Photonics”, awarded at the Photonics West conference in San Francisco.

“In four years, we’ve gone from an idea to delivering award-winning, market-leading hardware for photonic quantum computing,” said Stefan Hengesbach, CEO of Quix. “This award-winning processor is the core element of our current generation of quantum computers, which has already made a huge impact in the quantum ecosystem as an excellent tool to perform fundamental on-chip quantum mechanical experiments.