Quantum computing promises to transform our world in rapid, radical and revolutionary ways: solving in seconds problems that would take classical computers years, accelerating the discovery of new medicines, creating sustainable materials, optimizing complex systems, and strengthening cybersecurity. It does so using qubits, the quantum counterparts of classical bits, which can occupy multiple states simultaneously and enable a fundamentally new kind of computation.
For example, imagine 1,000 trucks need to arrive at 10,000 different locations, each, in different parts of the country. A traditional computation model would examine each of the 10 million possible routes one by one to evaluate their efficacy, but a quantum model would be able to evaluate all those millions of different routes instantaneously.
At the same time, quantum sensing is opening new frontiers in precision measurement, enabling technologies such as ultra-sensitive medical imaging and navigation systems that can detect minute changes in gravity or magnetic fields, capabilities that could allow doctors to identify diseases earlier or help vehicles navigate without GPS. UCF researchers believe the science of light, photonics, may hold the key to unlocking quantum computing's true potential.
"To produce truly useful quantum computers, we need complex, entangled states of light that are robust to imperfections," says Professor Andrea Blanco-Redondo.
Blanco-Redondo is the Florida Photonics Center of Excellence Endowed Professor of Optics and Photonics at CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics. She heads the Quantum Silicon Photonics (QSP) research group, which aims to better understand the fundamental classical and quantum properties of light — knowledge that will be critical to advance the field of quantum computing.
The team's study on "High-dimensional Topological Photonic Entanglement" is now published in Science, featuring Blanco-Redondo alongside CREOL doctoral student Javad Zakery and former research scientist Armando Perez-Leija (now at Saint Louis University) as the principal investigators.
"It's been shown that entanglement entails advantages for both quantum computing and quantum sensing," Blanco-Redondo says. "It is crucial to be able to generate these quantum-entangled states of light in a robust and scalable manner to facilitate those operations."
Topological Transformation
Topological modes are special ways for light to propagate within a structure. They are immune to imperfections because their existence is protected by the system's overall (global rather than local) properties of the system. One example is superlattices, which have been known to generate these modes.
Blanco-Redondo sums up the breakthrough: "We have figured out a way to entangle the topological protected modes of superlattices."
Any one photon can be in a complex superposition of multiple states at once. When two such photons are entangled, Blanco-Redondo explains, measuring one of them will determine the mode of the other.
"There's a quantum connection between them," she says. "They share a single joint state, so measuring one immediately tells you what you'll find when you measure the other."
Entangling multiple topological states was the fundamental limit — or so scientists thought.
"We had shown the fundamental piece, but we didn't know how to scale up," Blanco-Redondo says. "What we have shown with this new method is a scalable way to generate more and more complex entangled states, maintaining topological protection of those entangled states."
That means those entangled states will be, not only more robust to imperfections, but will have larger capacity for encoding quantum information, both critical qualities for a quantum system's stability and thus to enable quantum information systems at scale.
Surfing the Waveguides
More complex doesn't mean more "complicated". Blanco-Redondo's team accomplished this scaling-up by rearranging the furniture in the room the light occupies, so to speak. The "furniture" in this case are silicon photonic waveguide arrays.
"We can do it in a way that doesn't increase the complexity of the system," Blanco-Redondo says, "We have figured out a way to displace the waveguides in a configuration which supports many co-localized protected modes instead of just one."
The end result, according to Blanco-Redondo is a larger capacity to encode quantum information resiliently.
Collaboration at CREOL
This marks the second time the QSP group has been featured in a major research journal in the past year, after their recent feature in Nature Materials in 2025 . Their discoveries demonstrated the use of a platform to precisely control the dissipation, or loss, of states of light, which in turn leads to robust topological properties.
This comes at a time that the Florida Alliance for Quantum Technology (FAQT), of which CREOL is a part of, is accelerating its industry outreach efforts with the goal of making Florida a leading hub for quantum technology. FAQT took center stage during the 2026 CREOL Industrial Affiliates Symposium , which brought together leaders across academia, industry and government.
"It's a great boost of motivation," Blanco-Redondo says about the Science publication, adding that the potential exposure to the broader quantum community could bring a consequential boost to their initiative, especially as the CREOL faculty build momentum. Blanco-Redondo also leads CREOL's Quantum Leap Initiative , which is focused on building shared facilities and enabling a collaborative environment to secure CREOL's pioneering position in quantum optical science and applications. She also co-leads the UCF Quantum Initiative .
"We are at a point in which we are joining forces," Blanco-Redondo says, "And we are starting to collaborate very closely, combining our expertise in different areas to build quantum infrastructure and capabilities, which leverage our leading position in optics and photonics and give us a distinctive advantage."
