FET Flagship on Quantum Technology

Quantum technologies harness the features of quantum physics, such as superposition and entanglement, to achieve unprecedented performance in technological applications. The Quantum FET Flagship aims to unlock the full potential of quantum technologies and accelerate their development and take-up into commercial products in Europe. In particular, five domains are strongly supported including quantum communication, computation, simulation, as well as sensing and metrology.

The projects at University of Basel target the development of Quantum communication technologies to guarantee secure data transmission and long-term security for the information society as well as Quantum sensing and metrology in order to achieve unprecedented sensitivity, accuracy and resolution in measurement and diagnostics. All three projects involve large consortia with 14 or 21 partners. Universities and companies from all over Europe will be working closely together for the duration of three years. For every project the budget is in the range of 10 Million Euro.

The project of Nicolas Sangouard, “Quantum Internet Alliance” (QIA), targets a blueprint for a pan-European Quantum Internet by ground-breaking technological advances, culminating in the first experimental demonstration of a fully integrated network stack running on a multi-node quantum network. The future Quantum Internet will provide radically new internet applications by enabling communication between any two points on Earth with unprecedented security guarantees.

The project of Philipp Treutlein, “Miniature Atomic vapor-Cell Quantum devices for SensIng and Metrology AppLications” (MACQSIMAL), aims to make recent advances in atomic quantum metrology and sensing available to high-impact applications through microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. MACQSIMAL will develop quantum-enabled sensors with outstanding sensitivity for five key physical observables: magnetic fields, time, rotation, electro-magnetic radiation and gas concentration.

The project of Patrick Maletinsky, “Advancing Science and TEchnology thRough dIamond Quantum Sensing” (ASTERIQS), will exploit quantum sensing based on the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) colour centre in diamond, which will bring solutions to societal or economical needs where no solutions exist yet. Its objective is to develop advanced applications based on magnetic field measurement (e. g. batteries, lab-on-chip NMR, camera), new sensing applications to sense temperature within a cell and new measurement tools to elucidate the chemical structure of single molecules by NMR for the pharmaceutical industry or the structure of spintronics devices at the nanoscale for new generation spin-based electronic devices.

Congratulations to the quantum physics, and good luck with the NCCR application!