Photonic Quantum Technologies

量子力学告诉我们世界如何在最基本的层面上运作。它预测了非常奇怪的行为，通常只有在非常冷和非常小的情况下才能观察到。它有一个内在的机会元素，允许两个不同状态的叠加，并承认物体之间的超强相关性，这在我们的日常世界/纠缠中是荒谬的。尽管有这种奇怪的行为，量子力学是我们有史以来最成功的理论，它几乎完美地预测了将要发生的事情！虽然量子力学理论在上个世纪初就被邀请，但量子信息科学只是在过去几十年才出现，以考虑通过专门利用量子力学效应在信息的编码，传输和处理中实现额外的功率和功能。预计未来的技术包括具有巨大计算能力的量子计算机，保证最精确测量的量子计量学，以及已经用于商业通信系统并提供完美安全性的量子密码学。光/光子/的单个粒子是优秀的量子比特或量子比特，因为它们几乎没有噪音。它们在未来的量子技术中也有很大的应用潜力：全光量子计算机的方案是一个领先的竞争者，光子是量子通信和测量光程长度的量子计量方案的明显选择。光子信息科学已经有了一些令人印象深刻的原理证明，然而，光子量子技术遇到了一个障碍：它们被困在研究实验室里。迄今为止，所有的演示都依赖于不完美、不可扩展和庞大的元件，其中单个光子在空气中传播。这不适合未来的技术。此外，这些关键组件尚未集成，而这些组件对于实现可扩展和实用的技术至关重要。该项目旨在通过开发基于金刚石纳米晶体的单光子源、光学芯片上的光学线和超导单光子探测器来解决这些问题，以达到所需的高性能水平。它还旨在将所有这些组件集成在单个光学芯片上，从而将光子量子技术从实验室推向市场。

Quantum mechanics tells us how the world works at its most fundamental level. It predicts very strange behaviour that can typically only be observed when things are very cold and very small. It has an inbuilt element of chance, allows superpositions of two different states, and admits super-strong correlations between objects that would be nonsensical in our everyday world / entanglement . Despite this strange behaviour, quantum mechanics is the most successful theory that we have ever had / it predicts what will happen almost perfectly!Although the theory of quantum mechanics was invited at the beginning of the last century, quantum information science has only emerged in the last decades to consider what additional power and functionality can be realised by specifically harnessing quantum mechanical effects in the encoding, transmission and processing of information. Anticipated future technologies include quantum computers with tremendous computational power, quantum metrology which promises the most precise measurements possible, and quantum cryptography which is already being used in commercial communication systems, and offers perfect security.Single particles of light / photons / are excellent quantum bits or qubits, because they suffer from almost no noise. They also have great potential for application in future quantum technologies: schemes for all optical quantum computers are a leading contender, and photons are the obvious choice for both quantum communication and for quantum metrology schemes for measuring optical path lengths. There have already been a number of impressive proof-of-principle demonstrations of photonic information science.However, photonic quantum technologies have reached a roadblock: they are stuck in the research laboratory. All of the demonstrations to date have relied on imperfect, unscalable and bulky elements with single photons travelling in air. This is not suitable for future technologies. In addition there has been no integration of these critical components which will be essential for the realisation of scalable and practical technologies. This project aims to address these problems by developing single photon sources based on diamond nanocrystals, optical wires on optical chips, and superconducting single photon detectors, to the high performance levels required. It also aims to integrate all of these components on a single optical chip, and thus bring photonic quantum technologies out of the laboratory towards the marketplace.