The new OPTOLogic project aims to develop a new technological platform with quantum devices and ultrashort light pulses to reduce energy loss in electronic circuits.
Since the late 1980s, energy consumption from the modern electronics industry has increased drastically. Even worse, most of the consumed energy from these devices is wasted, dissipated or lost in the transport of charge or electricity throughout electronic circuits. Knowing that our information-based society is growing at exponential rates, translating into increasing demands for consumer electronic products, studies have estimated a projected energy consumption increase of 20% by 2030. This amount is expected to surpass the total energy production available worldwide, a major problem that needs a rather quick and affordable solution.
With that in mind, the purpose of the project is to develop quantum materials to create a new class of dissipation-less quantum devices by using structured ultrafast pulses of light to induce and control the topological states (the different forms that matter may take depending on how the atoms inside are organized) of these materials in order to reduce the major energy loss in electronic circuits.
A new class of dissipation-less devices
Now, different solutions implementing conventional semiconductor materials have been proposed to solve this major challenge, but none have been found effective enough. The recently launched OPTOlogic project is searching to overcome this challenge and fulfill two major goals: mitigate dissipation and save energy. Coordinated by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Jens Biegert, the consortium is comprised of ICFO, Max Plank Society (MPG), French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Forschungsverbund Berlin (FVB-MBI), and LightOn. This multi-disciplinary team of experts and SMEs unites world-leading experimental, theoretical, and industrial expertise in condensed matter physics, ultrafast laser technology, attoscience, quantum optics and computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
To do so, the consortium will search to develop a new technological platform that leverages the best aspects of topology, to avoid energy loss in electronic transport, light-wave-electronics, to overcome limitations imposed by material properties, and quantum materials with quantum properties that can be used for novel information storage and processing. They will build a novel topological Qubit, the first elementary building block for the development of this innovative quantum technology, and search to perform quantum logic operations that can surpass those limitations imposed by simple binary operations.
The project will use the latest findings in ultrafast lasers, nanotechnology, and adapted quantum computing architecture to develop this new device. As ICREA Prof. at ICFO Jens Biegert remarks,
“The breakthrough of such device could result in a thousand-fold more efficient electronic circuit, with simultaneous million-to-billion-fold increase in computing clock speeds, which could move and store information with minimal energy expense, whilst achieving dramatically increased computing power”.
