Quantum Pulse Ventures (QPV), a company developing technology to reduce barriers to quantum computing, has created what it describes as a universal directional coupler for photonic quantum computers. According to the company, the couplers can reduce the cost per computer by up to $900 million by lowering hardware requirements, reducing run time, and improving robustness against imperfections. Currently available for licensing, the company's technology was co-developed by QPV and the research team at Tel-Aviv University (TAU) through Ramot, the University's technology transfer company. QPV, founded in 2021, has exclusive license to the relevant patents from TAU. Quantum Pulse Ventures’ universal directional coupler for photonic quantum computers leverages principles that allowed the first MRI machines to enter the integrated optical domain. The company said it expects the technology to reduce the cost to build a photonic quantum computer by an order of magnitude. Courtesy of Quantum Pulse Ventures. “By reducing the number of physical qubits required per logical qubit tenfold or accelerating the computer speed by a similar factor, we provide the builders of [photonic quantum computers] the ability to reduce manufacturing, cooling, and networking requirements and potentially save $900M out of the projected $1B cost per [photonic quantum computer],” said Ofer Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of Quantum Pulse Ventures. “Photonic operations are susceptible to fabrication error. For classical applications, this amounts to lowering slightly the signal-to-noise ratio, which can be tolerated for many photonic applications,” said professor Haim Suchowski of Tel Aviv University and chief architect and co-founder of Quantum Pulse Ventures. “However, for quantum computing and more generally quantum information processing, the issue becomes a show-stopper: If the error is even slightly larger than a well-defined threshold (around 1%), the computation error cannot be corrected — no matter how many more physical units are added to the quantum circuit.” Realizing the importance of mitigating the error arising from fabrication imperfections, the company has imported the same physical concept called compositing pulses that enabled the first MRI machines to enter the integrated optical domain, Suchowski said. By reducing the error rate, the technology significantly reduces the number of qubits required.