Abstract

Implementations of quantum computing are interesting due to the perceived ability to leverage conventional semiconductor fabrication technologies and thereby scale from few qubit devices to the mega qubit processors required for large-scale, error corrected computations. The reality is that this scale up is difficult for a number of factors, one of the most important being the problem of qubit transport, or equivalently on-chip quantum communication. Here we explore a new concept for quantum communication inspired by techniques of photonics. We show that by introducing a time-varying confining potential to a spin chain, we can guide the propagation of spin excitations - magnons - in a fashion entirely analogous to the means by which photons are guided in photonic devices. We term this method of guiding the spin-guide, by analogy with conventional waveguides. This approach opens a whole host of techniques from conventional linear optics to spin physics approaches. In particular we also demonstrate the equivalent of bend-loss in accelerating spin guides and beam splitting techniques.