Desmond

$IONQ IonQ published a patent today that solves a problem in quantum networking. To connect quantum computers across a city, a country, or an ocean, you need to send the information they produce through fiber optic cables. This fiber already exists. It's the same fiber that carries the internet, phone calls, and streaming video around the world. The problem is that quantum computers and the global fiber network speak different languages of light. Light has different colors. Each color is a different wavelength. The fiber network was built to carry one specific range of wavelengths. The amplifiers that boost the signal every fifty miles or so along an undersea cable are built to work on that range. It's called the telecom C-band. A barium ion quantum computer at IonQ emits a particle of light at a completely different wavelength. If you put that light into a telecom fiber, it loses its signal almost immediately. The fiber is the wrong color for it. IonQ's patent describes how to convert the light from the wavelength the quantum computer emits to the wavelength the fiber carries, in two steps, without breaking the quantum information the light is carrying. The last part is the hard part. The quantum information depends on a fragile property of the light. Converting one color to another usually destroys it. IonQ figured out how to do the conversion and keep the information intact. A quantum computer that emits light the world's fiber network can already carry is a quantum computer that can be networked using the infrastructure that already exists.

$IONQ IonQ published a patent today that solves a problem in quantum networking. To connect quantum computers across a city, a country, or an ocean, you need to send the information they produce through fiber optic cables. This fiber already exists. It's the same fiber that carries the internet, phone calls, and streaming video around the world. The problem is that quantum computers and the global fiber network speak different languages of light. Light has different colors. Each color is a different wavelength. The fiber network was built to carry one specific range of wavelengths. The amplifiers that boost the signal every fifty miles or so along an undersea cable are built to work on that range. It's called the telecom C-band. A barium ion quantum computer at IonQ emits a particle of light at a completely different wavelength. If you put that light into a telecom fiber, it loses its signal almost immediately. The fiber is the wrong color for it. IonQ's patent describes how to convert the light from the wavelength the quantum computer emits to the wavelength the fiber carries, in two steps, without breaking the quantum information the light is carrying. The last part is the hard part. The quantum information depends on a fragile property of the light. Converting one color to another usually destroys it. IonQ figured out how to do the conversion and keep the information intact. A quantum computer that emits light the world's fiber network can already carry is a quantum computer that can be networked using the infrastructure that already exists.