Scalable optical ising-machine

Qu&Co comments on this publication:

Networks of coupled optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) are an alternative physical system for solving Ising type problems. Theoretical/numerical investigations have shown that in principle quantum effects (like entanglement between delay-coupled pulses) can play meaningful roles in such systems. In this paper, McMahon et al. (and an earlier paper of Inagaki et al.), show that this type of architecture is relatively scalable and can be used to solve max cut problems accurately, although in the current prototype devices the quantum features are 'washed out' by high round-trip losses (typically 10 dB), to the point that a purely semi-classical description of the system is sufficient to explain all the observed experimental results. The next step would be to realize this architecture in a system where the quantum nature is not lost.