Optical Waveguides for Quantum Computing
What Are Optical Waveguides?
Basic Principle
An optical waveguide confines light in a high-refractive-index core surrounded by lower-index cladding, ensuring propagation along a defined path through total internal reflection or index contrast engineering. In quantum computing, waveguides act as quantum interconnects for photon qubits, where performance depends critically on:
- Low propagation and coupling loss to maintain photon survival
- Phase stability for interference-based quantum gates
- Compactness and scalability for dense photonic integration