CERN’s Quantum Technology Initiative, Setting the Ground for Impact
The CERN Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI) explores how emerging quantum technologies can enable new research in particle physics, and in doing so provide appealing use-cases for the quantum industry in Member States, Associate Member States, and beyond. QTI also seeks to engage with external partners to identify applications of CERN’s know-how in the field of quantum tech.
The QTI Centre of Competence “Collaboration for Impact”, is coordinated by the CERN Knowledge Transfer group, building connections and finding partners, to support researchers across CERN in their collaboration with external stakeholders. In 2024, significant effort was made to reach out to global experts in quantum science and engineering to bring them together for a pivotal conference in early 2025 and shape joint activities within the QTI.
In 2024, important results were published in the field of quantum communications involving technology originating from CERN.
A key area of focus in quantum communications is on exploiting the quantum properties of light to ensure undecipherable, secure communications in a future world with quantum computers. These technologies, which are currently the most mature in this realm, are grouped together in what is usually referred to as quantum key distribution.
However, it is also possible to envisage the so-called quantum internet, where the quantum properties of light are exploited not for cryptography, but to exchange quantum information. This would mean the potential linking of a network of computers or sensors across tens or hundreds of kilometres, without needing to convert the quantum information into classical signals. It is this aspect of quantum communications that is most useful to CERN’s experimental work.
Quantum Connections and Internet
Most progress in this area is currently in academia, although there are also start-ups that are, today, aiming at this ambitious goal. To achieve the quantum internet, researchers need to distribute so called ‘entanglement’. That is, create a ‘quantum connection’ between two distant quantum objects. Doing so requires very precise timing to the order of billionths of a second across the network.
The CERN-born technology, White Rabbit, can potentially achieve this connection over hundreds of kilometres.
In 2024, research results were published demonstrating how White Rabbit was used to synchronise components within a network during several important demonstrations where quantum entanglement was distributed over tens of kilometres in a city environment.
For example, in the Netherlands, a quantum metropolitan link between Delft and Den Haag was created using White Rabbit. In this case, researchers successfully linked individual nitrogen atoms which were embedded in small diamond crystals, creating the ability to communicate through a 25-kilometre optical fibre cable.
As another example, researchers used White Rabbit to help deploy a large-scale intercity quantum network connecting laboratories at Stony Brook University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States of America. Their experiments focused on entanglement-based quantum networking, connecting multiple sites in an urban environment, tens of kilometres apart across Long Island, New York.
Such projects are at the forefront of the early stages of quantum communication systems, which could eventually connect quantum computers and sensors, become part of CERN’s infrastructure and bring technological benefits to the wider world.
These two examples, reported in 2024, of how technology originating from CERN is being used in pioneering metropolitan scale quantum networks were presented at the CERN Quantum Technology Conference.
The Open Quantum Institute
In 2024, following a successful one-year incubation period led by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), the new, three-year CERN-based pilot of the Open Quantum Institute (OQI) was launched. The OQI builds on QTI’s mission to help ensure that quantum computing is put to use to achieve key United Nations Sustainable Development goals, by facilitating the widest possible access to quantum computing resources and technical expertise around the world to reduce a possible new digital divide.