Telecom colour centres in silicon: an all-silicon quantum computing and communications platform

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Today's internet, built upon the laws of classical physics, continues to revolutionize our lives. A quantum internet, based upon the intriguing and richer laws governing quantum bits (qubits), will offer additional revolutionary capabilities which are otherwise impossible to achieve. Networked quantum computers will teleport information; perform crucial computational tasks exponentially faster than the world's top supercomputers; generate provably impenetrable cryptography and provably secure cloud computation; and support the simulation of nature (drugs, materials) with a realism that simply cannot be approximated by any other means. Networks of quantum computers unleash exponentially more combined capacity than the sum of their parts, and given expected environmental constraints, will likely be far easier to build than monolithic quantum supercomputers. Given the nascent state of the field, the full spectrum of future applications of quantum technologies likely lies outside our current collective imaginations. The potential of this sector is fueling intense and accelerating research worldwide. Last year the world observed a 53-qubit standalone quantum computer eclipsing the computing power of the world's top supercomputer! Yet even though it is widely assumed that, eventually, quantum computers will be networked over global quantum telecommunication channels, there is no consensus around the quantum hardware interface which will unlock this ambitious objective. Quite the opposite: there is a fierce and growing worldwide search underway to prototype an ideal quantum interface between long-lived material-based qubits suitable for high performance quantum computing, and telecommunications photons suitable for quantum networking. Many imperfect interfaces, often in exotic materials and at the wrong wavelengths, have been thoroughly studied in the pursuit of this visionary aim. Despite the fact that silicon is the basis of both the world's foremost computing and telecommunications technologies, it was widely assumed that silicon did not have the requisite quantum interfaces necessary to make the dream of an all-silicon quantum internet a reality. Excitingly, our very recent work resoundingly disproved this notion: we have produced and characterized a silicon matter-telecom photon interface of the highest quality. The next steps are clear: we must deploy these matter-photon interfaces into real quantum devices and prove beyond all doubt that they can underpin the quantum computation and communication technologies of the near future. This grant will allow us to build on our achievements, collaborations, and world-class infrastructure, and leverage an exceedingly rare first-mover global competitive advantage as well as decades of silicon manufacturing R&D. It will support, train and produce future quantum leaders. If we are successful, we anticipate this work will lead to a broad coalescence of research efforts towards a quantum dominant design.