Quantum computational advantage with a programmable photonic processor.

A quantum computer attains computational advantage when outperforming the best classical computers running the best-known algorithms on well-defined tasks. No photonic machine offering programmability over all its quantum gates has demonstrated quantum computational advantage: previous machines were largely restricted to static gate sequences. Earlier photonic demonstrations were also vulnerable to spoofing, in which classical heuristics produce samples, without direct simulation, lying closer to the ideal distribution than do samples from the quantum hardware.

Strong Nonlinear Coupling in a Si_{3}N_{4} Ring Resonator.

We demonstrate that nondegenerate four-wave mixing in a Si_{3}N_{4} microring resonator can result in a nonlinear coupling rate between two optical fields exceeding their energy dissipation rate in the resonator, corresponding to strong nonlinear coupling. We demonstrate that this leads to a Rabi-like splitting, for which we provide a theoretical description in agreement with our experimental results. This yields new insight into the dynamics of nonlinear optical interactions in microresonators and access to novel phenomena.