Silicon Skyline

Photonic chips are built from ultra-thin layers only hundreds of nanometers thick. As white light grazes these stacked surfaces, interlayer interference creates a gradation of brilliant colors. The gold wires, thinner than a human hair, punctuate the surface like city lights after dark.

Captured with a digital camera and a flashlight, the image reveals hundreds of miniature light-guiding devices packed onto silicon chiplets. These circuits are designed for quantum computing, where information is carried by single particles of light, called photons. As photons move through the chip, carefully timed electrical signals flow through the gold wires acting as traffic lights, directing each photon’s path. Technologies like these open new ways of computing, promising both powerful tools for solving complex problems and an exciting window into the fundamental rules of the quantum world.