Overview

• The pilot linked one server and one node on Verizon’s campus network in Philadelphia over approximately one kilometer of commercial fiber.
• The Q-chip pairs a classical header with a quantum payload to enable IP-style addressing, packetization, routing, and dynamic switching without measuring the quantum state.
• By reading the classical header, the system inferred channel noise and applied on-chip corrections, preserving entanglement and maintaining transmission fidelity above 97%.
• The work is published in Science, led by first author Yichi Zhang and senior author Liang Feng of the University of Pennsylvania.
• Silicon photonics fabrication suggests scalable metro deployments, but long-distance expansion still requires quantum repeaters or new devices, and current long-range QKD does not connect quantum processors.