Scalability is perhaps the biggest challenge facing quantum computing. Known technologies have fundamental limitations on how many qubits can fit in a single module, which poses the question of how to scale beyond the number of qubits that can be hosted by a single module. The ability to distribute entanglement answers this question. If a system can distribute entanglement between modules, that entanglement can then be consumed to implement multi-qubit operations between qubits in separate modules. For this reason, distributed entanglement is vital to unlocking scalability for quantum computing.
However, this answer may raise other questions for those less familiar with the inner workings of quantum technologies: What is entanglement, how is it established, and how is it consumed? This video, created with our partners at Microsoft, illustrates the three steps that Photonic took to establish, distribute and consume entanglement in our demonstration.
