Q-ESSENCE - Quantum InterfacES, SENsors, and Communication based on Entanglement Integrating Project

Project abstract

Q-ESSENCE aims at the development of quantum interfaces capable of high-fidelity mapping of quantum information between different quantum systems, at the generation of quantum entanglement at new scales and distances as a resource to carry out quantum information tasks and at the engineering of multipartite entanglement in specific topologies of elementary systems.
Quantum entanglement has the capacity to enable disruptive technologies that solve outstanding issues in:

• trust, privacy protection, and security in two- and multi-party transactions;
• novel or enhanced modes of operation of ICT devices;
• reference standards, sensing, and metrology.

This ambitious goal can be reached only through radically new designs of protocols, architectures, interfaces, and components. Q-ESSENCE will achieve this by a concerted application-driven effort covering relevant experimental, phenomenological, and fundamental aspects. Q-ESSENCE main outcomes:

• development of entanglement-enabled and entanglement-enhanced ICT devices: atomic clocks, quantum sensors, and quantum random-number generators;
• novel physical-layer architectures for long-distance quantum communication that surpass current distance limitations through the deployment of next-generation components;
• distributed quantum information protocols that provide disruptive solutions to multiuser trust, privacy-protection, and security scenarios based on multipartite entanglement.

Underpinning science and enabling technologies: light-matter interfaces providing faithful interconversion between different physical realizations of qubits; entanglement engineering at new scales and distances; robust architectures protecting quantum information from decoherence; quantum information concepts that solve problems of trust and privacy. Q-ESSENCE will use entanglement as a specifically quantum resource that enables novel or enhanced modes of operation of key devices in ICT technologies, such as sensors, random number generators, and atomic clocks, despite environmental decoherence. This has the potential to yield tremendous changes in the range and quality of information available for processing by ICT systems, as well as in the intrinsic functioning of ICT devices, for example through improved reference standards.

Project results

Publications:

• A. Restelli, J.C. Bienfang, C.W. Clark, I. Rech, I. Labanca, M. Ghioni, S. Cova, “Improved Timing Resolution Single-Photon Detectors in Daytime Free-Space Quantum Key Distribution With 1.25 GHz Transmission Rate” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, vol. 16, pp. 1084-1090, 2010;
• P. J. Clarke, R. J. Collins, P. A. Hiskett, M. García-Martínez, N. J. Krichel, A. McCarthy, M. G. Tanner, J. A. O'Connor, C. M. Natarajan, S. Miki, M. Sasaki, Z. Wang, M. Fujiwara, I. Rech, M. Ghioni, A. Gulinatti, R. H. Hadfield, P. D. Townsend, G. S. Buller: “Analysis of Detector Performance in a Gigahertz Clock Rate Quantum Key Distribution System”, New Journal of Physics, vol. 13, pp. 1-23, 2011;
• A. Gulinatti, I. Rech, F. Panzeri, C. Cammi, P. Maccagnani, M. Ghioni, S. Cova: “New Silicon SPAD Technology for Enhanced Red-sensitivity, High-resolution Timing and System Integration”, Journal of Modern Optics, vol. 59, pp. 1489-1499, 2012.