Full-stack architectures for fault tolerant quantum computing with photons

A linear optical approach to quantum computing offers highly coherent qubits, high fidelity single qubit gates, and probabilistic entangling operations that can be implemented using well-known quantum optical methods. The key advantage of photonic quantum computing is the fact that the required photonic chips can be produced in conventional fabrication facilities used for commercial silicon photonics, allowing scaling to achieve large-scale error correction. As a hardware platform for quantum computation linear optics offers unique flexibility in designing architectures for fault tolerant quantum computing. Some interesting examples are the long range connectivity which is straightforward in a photonic architecture, and the ability to move qubits in temporal as well as spatial dimensions. I will discuss how these features impact on designing architectures across the stack, from physical operations, to quantum error correction methods and combining it all into a universal set of logical gates.