In the course of a decade, one PhD student shifted gears from an academic career he admits was focused on sport and socialising, to work on a project which has brought the possibility of full-scale quantum computing a few years closer.

While others were captivated by X-Factor and Snapchat, ANU researcher Seiji Armstrong worked with an international team to put reins on the freakiest laws of the universe and control their unbridled computational abilities – meanwhile, some people thought the KFC Tower Burger was a breakthrough.

We stole a relatively large amount of time to speak with Mr Armstrong and tried to catch a reflection of the mind-bogglingly bizarre world of lasers, crystals and quantum mechanics; where a bit isn't always the bit you thought it was.

Early in his academic career, Seiji says his marks were “just good enough to keep doors open”, but after a chance visit to a laser-driven quantum physics lab in Santa Barbara, he threw himself into experiments with the improbability and uncertainty of the smallest elements of the universe.

Just a few years later, Mr Armstrong has used the Prime Minister’s Australia-Asia Award to join a team based at the University of Tokyo, headed by one of the biggest names in the emerging field - Professor Akira Furusawa.

The supergroup of nine researchers worked on what may be the processor for the next generation of computers – a system which weaves the photons from two lasers together to create a computational circuit board made entirely of light.

The team’s project saw them break the record for the amount of light pulses used to carry out calculations in a laser beam.

In fact they annihilated the record - which had been set at 14 quantum pulses – with an experiment stitching 10,000 pulses together in a huge cluster of programmable light.

The project is the latest step toward the quantum computing future, which seeks to use the spooky actions and general weirdness of quantum particles as the basis for computation. Theoretically, quantum technologies will offer a new dimension of computer capability. They will allow us to do some of the things we can do now, only much faster, while providing other possibilities we have not yet imagined.

The smallest component of the traditional computing space is the ‘bit’ – represented as either a ‘0’ or ‘1’. Quantum computing relies on bits too, called ‘qubits’, which have the distinct advantage of existing free from the annoying limitations of time and space.

Optical qubits are photons, which exist in a ‘superposition’; the combination of many different states at the same time. This means that a qubit can be both the 0 and 1 of the classical computer model, but they are actually both simultaneously. Because a qubit represents many possibilities at once, they can provide solutions to problems just about as quickly as they can be asked. The trick is being able to understand the answer.

Confusing? Yes.

Seiji describes the qubit/superposition situation with a simple coin analogy, where the classical model of 0 and 1 is represented by heads and tails in a coin toss.

“If we used a ‘quantum coin’, when we flipped it in the air, it wouldn’t be fluctuating between 0 and 1, it would actually be 0 and 1 at the same time,” he says.

“It gives us access to a larger computational space. Since these quantum bits can all exist in multiple different configurations, the amount of computational power you have access to increases very quickly with each additional qubit.”

The project at the University of Tokyo was based on a proposal by a theorist from the University of Sydney, Dr Nicolas Menicucci, which was suggested to the team by Mr Armstrong. He is quick to point out, however, that it was a true team effort in which all nine members brought a unique element to the table, enabling the effort to succeed.

The project created a resource wherein thousands of qubits could interact. Processing is done by squeezing photons in a laser beam through a crystal that entangles them into pairs. Once the pulses of light are in their entangled state it becomes possible to catch an occasional glimpse of their many possibilities – these small glimpses are the basis of quantum computing. Incredibly, the experiment (described here in the journal Nature) combined 10,000 of these squeezed chunks of light into a working quantum circuit board.

Seiji Armstrong’s key input was creating a control system for the table full of lasers, mirrors and crystals that made up the experimental device.

“My main contribution to the experiment was to design and implement a digital control system in order to guide laser light around the optical bench via mirrors and cavities,” he said.

“From a computer, with my custom-made programs we could control the positions of mirrors, vary the parameters of electronic devices, and turn on and off various devices with very high precision and extremely fast.”

The layout of the experiment is demonstrated in this animation.

As they work their way through the course, photons are split by crystals and entangled into a measurable, paired relationship. One half of the pair is delayed while the other shoots ahead, forcing them to become entangled with the pairs before and after. The result is a lattice of interwoven photons which can be measured to verify their structure. The laser lay-out was the contribution of Mr Shota Yokoyama, who has lent his optical skills to projects in Prof Furusawa’s lab several times.

“We measure the variance associated with the entangled pairs. The larger that variance, the larger the error of our measurement, so we want our variance to be small,” Seiji explains.

“The smaller the variance, the stronger the entanglement is. In fact, variance is what we are squeezing when we talk about squeezed light... if we squeeze the variance of ‘amplitude’, so that we can measure the amplitude extremely well, then the variance of ‘phase’ will be extremely large, meaning we cannot know anything about the phase of the light.

“This is governed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that you cannot know two related parameters with high precision. Squeezed light is a manipulation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It turns out we can know one parameter extremely well, at the expense of the other.”

Just being able to know and have some influence over the state of so many entangled photons is incredible, but the technique can (and likely will) expand almost without limits.

“The real limit comes from our ability to precisely control the pulses of light,” Seiji says.

“We could only control 10,000 in our experiment. This is already much, much larger than previous demonstrations, but given this technique... we should be controlling and measuring millions or billions of quantum systems. This is, of course, what the group in Tokyo is trying to do now.”

When asked what the next step for the 10,000-system cluster might be, Seiji said simply; “Make it bigger.”

Before explaining: “This sounds very unimaginative, but what I really mean by bigger is to expand it in another dimension... one way to do this would be to make another cluster of 10,000 quantum systems and weave the two clusters together.

“This would not only be bigger, but it would increase the dimensionality of the entire resource - the quantum circuit board - giving us many more inputs and outputs to the circuit board,” he said.

The system can in fact grow bigger and smaller at the same time.

“Our current demonstration was performed on an optical bench that was about 2 square metres,” he said.

“This is unnecessarily large, akin to the vacuum tubes in factories that the first traditional circuit boards and computers were made with.

“It would be a natural extension of the work to produce the same thing on much smaller integrated circuits. There is already great research being conducted around the world where people are fabricating extremely small wave-guides and optical circuits that are millimetres in scale. There is no reason why our huge cluster could not be produced on this small scale.”

The future for quantum computing looks to be a continual incline towards bigger and better abilities. It seems a similar lofty progression awaits ANU’s Seiji Armstrong. Just a few months from completing his PhD, the doors he fought to keep open now swing wider than ever. Seiji’s next career move is currently hypothetical, but he says he is looking to dig deeper into the quarry of quantum theory to uncover more uses for a field of physics most will never need to comprehend.

“I am applying for physics-related jobs in California, Zurich, and Australia,” he said.

“My fiancé wants to travel to Cambodia, she works in development... so we might do that, and I would probably become a data scientist.

“I think there could be some great opportunities in the next 5 years or so to commercialise some of these quantum technologies.

“The idea of this big data craze going on now is very exciting... I could apply a lot of the algorithms that I’ve learnt during my PhD to the field, hopefully.”

Hope is less necessary for someone with a clear aptitude for such an expansive field – but some hope may be allowed for the rest of the quantum scientific community, that one of its brightest young members stays in the game. escortstars.ch

There is, however, something in Seiji’s story for all of us. He says that simply discovering a new passion turned his path from one of laziness and low results to a world-beating, laser-wrangling, photon-squeezing breakthrough – so keep seeking or doing what you love, and if it happens to be something that virtually no-one else understands; more power to you.