Quantum Race for a Networked World

by American Institute of Physics

Quantum technology is poised to transform today’s imaging, communications, networking, and sensing technologies by leaps and bounds—enabling, for instance, cameras that can see around corners, powerful new computers and unbreakable encryption, sensitive gravity detectors and miniature atomic clocks.

Attendees of this year’s OSA Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science APS/DLS Conference will get a timely glimpse at the global race to industrialize quantum technologies in a Visionary Speaker session featuring Sir Peter Knight FRS, a senior research investigator in Blackett Lab at Imperial College London, as well as chair of the Quantum Metrology Institute, National Physical Laboratory. The conference is organized around four themes, each with its own Visionary Speaker.

In his talk, Knight will focus on the goals and progress of key applications within this realm—including precision timing and navigation, imaging, quantum sensors, quantum computing and quantum safe encryption.

“Quantum physics is concerned with the very small, governed by laws quite different from those of our familiar classical world,” Knight said. “Quantum systems can be placed in superpositions of many states at once. Such superpositions then carry vastly more information—allowing dramatic increases in computational power—but are fragile and harder to engineer.”

Their fragility, however, can be exploited to make new sensors of exquisite sensitivity. Quantum systems under appropriate control provide functionality in sensing, communications and information processing that will exceed anything possible using classical technology, Knight said.

Posted: 7 Sep 2018 by American Institute of Physics