Abstract

As applications for quantum coherent devices continue to be discovered, the race to develop platforms to harness quantum coherence is on. In general, one would expect such devices to be in the solid-state, and in this talk I will talk about two exceptional media, with the potential to cover two different aspects of quantum information processing. The first is phosphorus in silicon, which has excellent potential for realising a scalable quantum computer. Scalability here is enabled by the superb decoherence properties of phosphorus in silicon, potential integration with existing silicon technology, and a new architecture for quantum computing incorporating transport. I will review some of the recent theoretical work being performed in the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Comptuer Technology, and explain the new architecture and the new adiabatic transport mechanism that enables it. Next I will examine an alternative medium, ideally suited to manipulating photons, and hence with excellent near term prospects for devices: diamond containing the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV-) centre. Recently, researchers at the University of Melbourne (with many collaborators) have developed a new fabrication technology for creating micro-optical structures which is employed towards exploring quantum nonlinear optical effects such as electromagnetically induced transparency. I will also review some of this work, as well as introducing some of the future tasks that we are exploring, including photon-based condensed matter analog systems in a coupled cavity system.