Optical loss is the quiet tax on photonic quantum computing, and ASML now has a partner trying to lower it. The Dutch equipment maker and Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies will jointly study lithography processes aimed at photonic quantum hardware.
Light carries the information in these processors, so signal that escapes inside a chip eats into the computation. One major contributor is line edge roughness, the fine jaggedness that patterning leaves behind on waveguides.
Smoothed structures should leak less. The collaboration will examine lithography-based routes that tighten process control and yield photonic structures with lower loss.
Xanadu positions the work as a test of how much advanced lithography can lift photonic performance as the field pushes toward machines that are useful at scale.
Christian Weedbrook, the company’s founder and chief executive, called fault tolerance and error correction two of the industry’s most important technical goals. He said working with ASML opens access to leading process expertise for the company’s hardware development.
ASML’s Stan Baron, a senior vice president who heads its EU-US customer team, said the arrangement gives his company a closer look at next-generation photonics applications.
Xanadu launched in 2016 and designs systems that compute with light at room temperature. It lists on Nasdaq and the Toronto exchange, and maintains PennyLane, an open-source quantum software platform with a broad user base.
No commercial supply terms were disclosed. The pairing is a research effort rather than a purchase agreement.
