Title of the project: Efficient protocols for quantum computing using photonic platforms
Name of the VDSP student: Valeria Saggio
Project supervised by: Philip Walther

I work as a PhD student in the group of Prof. Philip Walther and I do research on multi-qubit entangled systems as well as quantum machine learning. My research has a strong experimental focus on quantum optics and quantum computation, and I work with both bulk and integrated optics.

The image shows light coupled into waveguides in a nanophotonic chip, and has been captured with an infra-red camera. Thanks to an active built-in interferometer (the smooth rectangle in the picture), that is only tens of micrometers long, the light can be routed upwards, downwards or can be split in both upper and lower paths. Many of these elements in sequence and column can be exploited to implement learning algorithms, where, as an example, the tuneability can be seen as the capability of a robot to move up and down in order to reach a predefined destination. In general, these types of photonic chips form the basis for implementing quantum-inspired neural networks or artificial intelligence algorithms.

Walther group