Abstract
Encoding and manipulating information on photons is one of the very first approaches explored for quantum computing. This lecture will describe the operation of photonic quantum computers and the architectures envisaged. These processors all exploit the quantum interference of identical photons, which has represented a major scientific and technological challenge in recent decades. Progress has now made it possible to produce the first computing prototypes handling a few dozen photons. In order to scale up, another quantum computing paradigm is currently being developed - measurement-based computing, which enables error correction and distributed computing. This computing is based on states of light where many photons are entangled, and can integrate spin qubits for greater efficiency.
