Chinese scholars achieve distributed optical quantum computing spanning 7 kilometers

On October 6th, the University of Science and Technology of China made headlines with groundbreaking developments in quantum networking, thanks to the team led by Academician Guo Guangcan. They have successfully demonstrated distributed optical quantum computing over an impressive distance of 7 kilometers, utilizing solid-state quantum storage.

The team, which included researchers Li Chuanfeng, Zhou Zongquan, and Liu Biheng, recently published their findings in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. They established a non-local quantum gate spanning 7 kilometers in Hefei, employing state-of-the-art multimode solid-state quantum storage in conjunction with a quantum gate teleportation protocol. This achievement marks a pioneering effort in distributed optical quantum computing over urban distances.

Distributed quantum computing is seen as a promising solution to the scalability issues that quantum computing faces. Until now, demonstrations of non-local quantum gates had been limited to distances of just a few dozen meters, insufficient for forming larger-scale quantum networks.

The experimental results were promising, revealing that the entanglement storage time for their solid-state quantum memory reached an impressive 80.3 microseconds—almost double the previous records. Additionally, the number of time modes for entanglement storage was increased to 1,097, significantly enhancing the rate at which non-local quantum gates could be generated. The research team successfully utilized these capabilities to execute quantum algorithms remotely and in a distributed manner.

This work sheds light on the potential for building a distributed quantum computing network based on quantum storage and optical communication, paving the way for scalable quantum computing. Reviewers have highlighted the significance of this achievement, commenting, “This work marks a significant advancement in the realization of quantum networks and opens up new experimental directions for distributed quantum information processing.”