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Artificial Neurons Go Quantum with Photonic Circuits

What happened?

Researchers at the University of Vienna, Italy’s National Research Council, and the Politecnico di Milano have demonstrated a quantum memristor. The quantum device acts on the same principle as a conventional memory resistor but operates on quantum states.

Researchers from MIT, the University of Vienna, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated an optical network based on a quantum memristor. The circuit uses light propagating along waveguides laser written on glass substrates and is guided by a superposition of multiple paths.

Why is this important?

Quantum computing is an emerging technology with the potential to revolutionize information processing and computation by harnessing the quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform operations on data at a much higher rate compared to classical computers. However, quantum computers require specific hardware that is not available yet, and hence they are limited to certain tasks only.