Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AppQInfo (Applications and Hardware for Photonic Quantum Information Processing)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-03-01 do 2023-02-28
Quantum Information Processing enriches information technology by offering higher quality, speed and unconditional security, not precedented in classical technologies. In particular, it embraces quantum communication and quantum simulations, the key applications that are at the focus of this proposal, recognised as the first two pillars of the Quantum Flagship, within H2020 framework programme of the European Union. AppQInfo will train ESRs to develop QIP techniques using state-of-the-art integrated quantum photonics, one of five Key Enabling Technologies for European industry. The development of these applications will be supported by the advancement of hardware platforms realized in collaboration with top European industrial partners. Staying at the front line of the second quantum revolution will allow the European Union to timely compete with global quantum initiatives such as Quantum Alliance Initiative in the US and National Quantum Programme of China which started in 2018. It will also address the compelling challenges such as cybersecurity of all EU citizens and resource effectiveness of industrial processes. This will be achieved through extensive high-level training of well-qualified ESRs in theory, experiment and hands-on interdisciplinary research as well as exposing them to multiple environments through secondments in industry, schools and training, supplemented by complementary skills required by the emerging quantum job market. All this will enable an acceleration of quantum technology adoption, will increase European innovation capacity and will ensure the knowledge transfer between disciplines, sectors and countries.
To achieve this goal, within the AppQInfo project we are going to explore the challenge of building feasible longdistance quantum communications for distances ranging from tens of kilometres to satellite-based systems using various data encoding. We will also study quantum photonic circuits towards their quantum transport properties and quantum transforms they implement. These platforms will be used for machine learning applications, such as building all-optical artificial neural networks, and applying them for quantum simulations. In parallel, we will develop
enabling technologies of sources and detectors of multiphoton quantum states and polaritonic logic gates. All this will be achieved by our innovative, carefully designed training programme, which will embrace scientific schools, complementary skill workshops, shared online courses, intersectoral, globally-spanned secondments, creative outreach and proactive dissemination activities.
During the first reporting period in WP1, ESR1 has been working on the theory of new protocols for distributing entangled states while ESR2 has been developing an experimental platform to show advantage of such protocols. ESR3 has been involved in the project of free-space quantum communication and inter-modal QKD. ESR4 focused on violation of Bell inequalities for time-bin entanglement. ESR5 studied quantum finite transforms.
Within WP2, ESR6 has been assessing quantum-dot sources for quantum cryptography tasks. ESR7 has been working on quantum simulations for materials science. ESR8 has proposed a new boson sampling experiment and ESR10 has proposed a new boson sampler architecture. ESR9 focused on the exciton-polariton platform for computing applications.
Finally, in the scope of WP3, ESR11 and ESR13 studied the possibilities of experimental quantum-photonic machine learning. ESR12 worked on experimental quantum imaging techniques while ESR14 has been researching the capacity of the exciton-polariton platforms for universal photonic information processing. ESR15 has been working on multi-photon detection.
Up to date, the project resulted in 5 scientific publications in high-profile peer-reviewed journals: Nature Photonics (2 publications, including 1 with accompanying open data set), Nature (1 publication), Annalen der Physik (1 publication) and Physical Review A (1 publication) and 1 conference paper.
Within the project we have already organized 5 events: a Kick-off meeting, a summer school, a shared thought training and two complementary skills trainings. Further events are planned for 2023 and 2024.