The Stanford Photonics Research Center

Applications of Nanophotonics to Classical and Quantum Information Technology - Ray Beausoleil

Moore's Law has set great expectations that the performance of information technology will improve exponentially until the end of the next decade. Although the physics of silicon transistors alone might allow these expectations to be met, the physics of the metal wires that connect these transistors almost certainly will not. We will describe a Si-compatible global interconnect architecture that could precipitate an "optical Moore's Law" and allow exponential performance gains until the transistors themselves become the bottleneck. Based on similar fabrication techniques and technologies, we will also present an approach to an optically-coupled quantum information processor for computation beyond Moore's Law, encouraging the development of practical applications of quantum information technology for commercial utilization.