Quantum computing with continuous variable optical states

Quantum computing is poised to offer revolutionary capabilities for medicine, materials, and cybersecurity. With several platforms showing promise as a viable quantum computing architecture, the ultimate winner remains unclear. Optical quantum computing offers the tantalizing promise of room-temperature operation and vast scalability. This technology has advanced far beyond its single-photon origins to encompass more robust and interesting states of light that serve as quantum information carriers with built-in resilience to decoherence. These so-called bosonic codes, when combined with a demonstrably scalable architecture like a continuous-variable cluster state, bring fault-tolerant quantum computing with optical systems within reach. The missing pieces are high enough squeezing in laboratory experiments and optical production of the bosonic-code states used as the information carriers. In this talk, I will give an overview of recent key advances in scalability and fault tolerance for optical quantum computing.