MIT researchers unveil photonic "ski jump" chip for efficient free-space light beaming and qubit control in Nature

MIT researchers have developed a new class of photonic devices that beam light from a chip into free space using an array of microscopic structures that curl upward like tiny ski jumps. The chip funnels light through connected waveguides to the structures. Modulators turn the light on and off rapidly and precisely. This setup allows thousands of individually controllable beams to be projected at once. The researchers used the platform to create detailed full-color images roughly half the size of a grain of table salt. They also showed the structures can control quantum bits, or qubits, in a quantum computing system. The work addresses a long-standing challenge of moving light from on-chip wires into the outside world. Existing methods handled only a few beams and could not scale to the millions of qubits needed in larger systems. The platform grew from the Quantum Moonshot Program involving MIT, the University of Colorado at Boulder, MITRE and Sandia National Laboratories. It relies on diamond-based qubits that require laser control. A new fabrication process creates the curved structures from two materials that expand differently as they cool, producing the upward curl through strain. Henry Wen, a visiting research scientist in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and co-lead author, said the system creates thousands of laser beams that can interact with the world outside the chip in a single shot. The research appears in Nature.