EPIQUE - European Photonic Quantum Computer

Project description and objective

Photonics is one of the first platforms explored for quantum computing (QC), bringing the advantage of low decoherence and natural connectivity for distributed and blind QC. Recent years have witnessed a step-change in the scale, complexity, and scope of QC with photons which recently led to 3 out of the 4 demonstrations of quantum advantage from Canadian and Chinese groups. These impressive achievements were obtained with squeezed light in bulky apparatus that are not fit for scalability. Europe shows strong leadership in development of integrated optical QC platforms, with breakthroughs in the development of high transmission dense photonic chips, record efficiency detectors and deterministic single photon sources. Photonic QC also benefits from a clear roadmap toward fault tolerant architectures proposed by leading EU quantum algorithm teams.

EPIQUE gathers world leaders in photonics QC with expertise in both technology and algorithms from academia and SMEs who work together to deliver the technological breakthroughs required to push the platform toward general purpose QC. This will be achieved via new nano fabrication that combines novel switching with mature silicon compatible circuitry, via optimising both single photon sources and detectors, via new interfacing possibilities in silicon nitride and direct write modular chips, via fast low loss switching in lithium niobate, and via quantum architectures that leverage all of these advances.

EPIQUE will develop three QC prototypes that will demonstrate essential building blocks of generating and fusing quantum states to entangle >10 qubits, and critical measurement and feed-forward capabilities required to scale the platform to >1000 qubits. At the end of this project, we will have proven a route to general purpose quantum computing that will strengthen private investment in EU based optical QC companies.