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Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. In the quantum regime, this translates to single photons being largely free of the noise and decoherence that is the main obstacle with other QC architectures. The surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. Different photons not interacting with each other is what makes optical quantum computation somewhat tricky. For example, basic quantum computation components like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons, require some form of nonlinearity to be implemented

Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. In the quantum regime, this translates to single photons being largely free of the noise and decoherence that is the main obstacle with other QC architectures. The surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. Different photons not interacting with each other is what makes optical quantum computation somewhat tricky. For example, basic elements like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons, require some form of nonlinearity, which is generally harder to implement experimentally.

Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. This means that the surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. Different photons not interacting with each other is what makes optical quantum computation somewhat tricky. For example, basic quantum computation components like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons, require some form of nonlinearity to be implemented

Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. In the quantum regime, this translates to single photons being largely free of the noise and decoherence that is the main obstacle with other QC architectures. The surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. Different photons not interacting with each other is what makes optical quantum computation somewhat tricky. For example, basic quantum computation components like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons, require some form of nonlinearity to be implemented

Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. This means that the surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. This means that two photons do not interact with each other, which makes it hard to implement basic components like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons.

Because light, at the right frequencies, interacts weakly with matter. This means that the surrounding temperature doesn't disturb the quantum state of a photon as much as it does when the quantum information is carried by matter (atoms, ions, electrons, superconducting circuits etc.). For example, reliable transmission of photonic qubits (more precisely, a QKD protocol) between China and Austria, using a low-orbit satellite as link, was recently demonstrated (see e.g. here).

Unfortunately, light also interacts extremely weakly (as in, it basically doesn't) with other light. Different photons not interacting with each other is what makes optical quantum computation somewhat tricky. For example, basic quantum computation components like two-qubit gates, when the qubits are carried by different photons, require some form of nonlinearity to be implemented