Light was used to calculate the inside of a hair-thick fibre

Optical circuits are crucial to the development of future quantum technologies, which are created at the microscopic level by working with individual atoms or photons. These circuits can be used to decode information at the end of a quantum communication line, after light has travelled a long distance along the fibre. They are also a key part of quantum computers and are used to perform complex calculations.

Quantum computers are expected to open up great advances in areas such as drug development, climate prediction and space exploration. Optical circuits can also be used in machine learning to process huge amounts of data very quickly.