photonic

This Rydberg approach to quantum computing has been worked on for a couple of decades, but technological advances—for instance, with lasers and photonics—were needed to make it work reliably.

Now, researchers from IBM and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia have created an optical switch—a critical component in many photonic devices—that is both incredibly fast and energy-efficient.

Using state-of-the-art photonics experiments, we were able to reveal the quantum motion that takes place within fractals in unprecedented detail.

The fruits of photonics are ubiquitous—it saturates modern technology, like flat-screen TVs—but physicists are now aiming for more radical applications, like computers that process information using light.