REPORTS & PUBLICATIONS
ORCA Computing Demonstrates Scalable Quantum Memory
Scalable quantum memories with high efficiency and bandwidth are a critical requirement for realizing a large-scale photonic quantum computer. ORCA Computing has published new research demonstrating a cavity-enhanced quantum memory that dramatically reduces the size and power requirements of a critical component for photonic quantum computers.
What are these devices?
- Quantum memories are systems that store and retrieve quantum states of light, which is essential for synchronizing operations such as entanglement. However, conventional quantum memory designs require high-power lasers, complex optical configurations, and large components, making them impractical to scale to the thousands of memories needed for fault tolerance.
- An optical cavity is a structure that confines light between mirrors, causing it to bounce back and forth multiple times. This enhances light-matter interactions – in our experiments, we use a rubidium vapor cell within the optical cavity to achieve this.
ORCA’s research demonstrates key breakthroughs:
- Order-of-magnitude reduction in power and size through cavity enhancement.
By placing the quantum memory inside an optical cavity, we can still achieve strong light-atom interactions with control pulse energies ten times lower than standard designs. The cavity also enables a more compact design with reduced footprint, critical for building large arrays of memories. - Reducing infrastructure needed for memory units.
Our innovative design achieves high-performance operation without requiring additional high-power lasers—a breakthrough that dramatically reduces the complexity and cost of each memory unit. - High-efficiency, low-noise operation at room temperature. Our cavity-enhanced design dramatically reduces laser power consumption and substantially decreases physical footprint compared to conventional memories.
Why does this matter?
Building a practical photonic quantum computer requires thousands of quantum memories, a scale that’s impossible with current technology. Our cavity-enhanced approach solves this scalability challenge.
By dramatically reducing power requirements and physical footprint, we’ve created quantum memories that can be manufactured as compact, rack-mounted arrays.
This positions ORCA to build the large-scale photonic quantum computers needed for commercially valuable applications and systems with the memory resources to run complex algorithms while maintaining the practical advantages of room-temperature operation and compatibility with existing fibre-optic networks.
