Xanadu, Corning Sign Collaboration Agreement to Advance Fibre Interconnects for Photonic Quantum Computing

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Xanadu, a leading photonic quantum computing company, and Corning Incorporated, the global leader in fibre, cable and connectivity, will collaborate to develop customized fibre and fibre-array solutions to enable low-loss networking of photonic quantum computing chips. This collaboration will bring together Xanadu's world-leading expertise in developing ultra-low-loss photonic chip components using customized fabrication and design techniques, and Corning's future-ready innovations in low-loss optical fibre and high-precision fibre arrays. The combination of expertise will help enable the development of fault-tolerant, universal photonic quantum computers at scale.

Building a utility-scale photonic quantum computer will require thousands of integrated photonic chips to be interconnected and networked using low-loss optical fibre. In a groundbreaking demonstration recently published in Nature, Xanadu demonstrated the world's first fibre-networked photonic quantum computer, named Aurora, consisting of 35 packaged photonic chips and a combined 13 km of optical fibre. In its current form, Aurora can in principle be scaled from its current 12-qubits to the coveted one-million-qubit benchmark that is estimated to be needed for fault tolerance. However, the fibre interconnects require specialty fibre and fibre arrays to enable the low-loss chip-to-fibre coupling needed to meet the stringent loss requirements necessary to scale up the architecture laid out by Aurora.

"Aurora demonstrated scalability and networkability on photonic quantum computers and our next goal is to dial down optical loss," says Inna Krasnokutska, lead photonics engineer at Xanadu. "We are excited to be collaborating with Corning on our next challenge towards building a universal, fault-tolerant photonic quantum computer. This work will leverage Corning's world-leading capabilities to develop optical fibre solutions which are optimized for Xanadu's photonic integrated circuits and optical interconnects."

This collaboration leverages Corning's expertise in developing and manufacturing low-loss fibre interconnects, and will contribute to addressing Xanadu's next challenge of driving down optical losses. Specifically, optical fibres and fibre-chip interconnects must be designed to meet the stringent loss requirements needed to scale the Aurora architecture. Developing components alongside Corning will help realize that, and results from this collaboration will be pivotal in minimizing loss in Xanadu's photonic infrastructure.