Three-Dimensional Quantum Computing

[Duxwing]

Visiting my university for help picking classes last spring, I was invited to a quantum computing seminar. The lecturer presented the q-bit, a device wherein laser-emitted photons passing from one prolate spheroid* to another entangle a particle in the first with the particle of the next. Despite knowing almost nothing of quantum mechanics, not having slept the night before, and only having eaten a slice of leftover pizza that day, I was thrilled! I asked the lecturer, "How could we scale this up? I want to put this in boxes out the door!" When he answered that the state-of-the-art was sheets of chains of these pairs, I disappointedely resolved to at least imagine some way to improve this technology.

Recalling reading about meta-materials in Kerbal Space Program, I vaguely remembered a Beyond Tomorrow episode wherein an opaque pane separating two cubicles clarified to aid conversation when both cubicle-dwellers faced it. Last I remembered that deactivating the laser disentangled the particles. The result seemed clear: separate the spheroids with a thin sheet of this material and control it with an electronic computer. These sheets could be arranged into cubes, their oblate spheroids extending from the faces, and the whole assembly replicated and connected to other assemblies with more cubes, the empty spaces filled with these spheroids to create a three-dimensional quantum computer.

Its capabilities could be extended by inscribing another cube into the first, each corner of the inner cube touching the center of one face of the outer cube. The inner cube's sheets would transform from transparent to reflective, enabling photons not only to be stopped but arbitrarily redirected; obviously, the laser would have to be so narrow as not to go around the inner cube. The output of this hybrid machine could control the electronic 'substrate' of another, much-larger, three-dimensional array that would be faster than one directly-controlled by an electronic computer because, presumably, the hybrid machine would be faster.

So... what do you guys think?

-Duxwing

*I cannot recall exactly what the spheroids were; I think they were of a gas so cold as not to collide with itself.