Full-stack Analog Optical Quantum Computer with A Hundred Inputs

Abstract: Optical technology emerges as a highly promising platform for quantum computing, driven by its enormous potential for large-scale ultrafast computation and its integration with telecom technology. There have been intensive investigations ongoing into the development of optical quantum computers, however, they are limited to small-scale, special-purpose, or low-quality systems. Error correction for fault tolerance is still very challenging, making a full-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer a long-term goal. However, practical testbeds for quantum computers, without the difficulty in error correction, are in high demand. Here we present an innovative analog optical quantum computer utilising continuous variables. Our analog optical quantum computer is based on sequential measurements of time-domain-multiplexed large-scale two-dimensional entanglement. Accumulated Gaussian noise and spurious bias caused by the imperfection of analog computing can be suppressed through careful calibration and repeated trials without complicated error correction. Our system achieves a hundred analog inputs and operates at a clock frequency of 100 MHz with a comprehensive full-stack architecture featuring a cloud interface and a Python software development kit (SDK) for enhanced accessibility and scalability. We demonstrate the detailed characterisation of our optical quantum computer and quantum state sorting as its example application. This development marks a significant step forward in the exploration of analog quantum computing, with a potential to accelerate both fundamental research and practical applications such as fast and large-scale optical neural networks.