The development of microchip technology has allowed modern computers to take one different functions, such as accessing emails, surfing the web and monitoring finances. This very same concept can now be applied to light in the field of quantum with the creation of an optical chip that is capable of processing photons in endless ways.

Designed by researchers from the United Kingdom's University of Bristol and Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the new optical chip technology is considered to be a major development in producing a quantum computer that can design new medicines, conduct superfast searches on database and perform difficult mathematical equations that most existing supercomputers are incapable of doing.

The optical chip can be fully reprogrammed to allow researchers to combine a number of available quantum experiments and process a massive amount of future protocols that have yet to be conceived. This marks a new age of quantum research that would allow engineers and scientists in the field to assume the forefront of advanced quantum technologies.

Before the creation of this new technology, quantum researchers have struggled in establishing new experiments because of the significantly fragile nature of systems often used in the scientific field.

The production of the optical chip represents a step change for photon experiments, creating an idea of what the future of quantum technologies would look like.

Lead author Dr. Anthony Laing said that an entire research field has been essentially placed onto one optical chip that can be easily controlled, and that the implications of such a technology could reach farther than the significant savings on resources that could come out of it.

He explained that people can now operate their very own photon experiments, similar to how they can run any other computer software. There is no more need for physicists to spend long months in building and conducting a new experiment in the field.

The researchers displayed the unique capabilities of the optical chip by reprogramming it to perform different experiments at high speeds. Each experiment would have otherwise taken scientists many months in order to build.

Using the new technology, Laing and his colleagues were able to conduct a number of experiments that would have taken a year to carry out in only a few hours. They regard the optical chip as a means to discover new fields of science that have yet to be chartered by researchers.

The optical chip was produced through a partnership between leading quantum photonics and telecommunications experts from the NTT.

The University of Bristol-led study is featured in the journal Science.

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