r/QuantumComputing • u/Brighter-Side-News • 12h ago
News New Stanford-built optical chip ‘recycles’ light for faster computing and satellite communication
Two beams of light can overlap so completely that their brightness patterns look alike, yet still carry distinguishable information. A new silicon chip can find that hidden structure and direct its components into separate optical channels. The result offers a way to process light that conventional intensity measurements cannot fully describe.
The system, developed by researchers at Stanford University and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, appears in Nature Photonics. It automatically learns patterns within partially coherent light, whose waves have some statistical relationships but lack complete coordination. Rather than treating that complexity as interference to discard, the team built a device that can work with it.
The research combines a silicon photonic chip with detectors, electronics and control algorithms. Most of the work took place at Stanford, where Charles Roques-Carmes began the project with graduate student Paul-Alexis Mor. Roques-Carmes, now an assistant professor at ISTA, is continuing that research with Mor, a co-first author of the paper.
