A multicore optical fiber that includes a plurality of waveguiding cores disposed in a cladding. The plurality of cores are situated adjacent to at least one other core with a core center to core center spacing being not larger than 10 times the radius of the average core, such that the greater than 10% of the light will couple from one core to the adjacent core over a propagating distance of 1 cm, along the fiber length so as to provide coupling between the adjacent cores and to enable quantum walk. The plurality waveguiding cores are disposed in the cladding in a ring distribution or at least a portion of the ring distribution.