Six new pilot projects will test quantum technologies and further progress in harnessing quantum phenomena for real-world applications, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Dec. 16.
The six projects are supported by NSF’s National Quantum Virtual Laboratory initiative, which aims to accelerate the development of quantum technologies by giving researchers access to specialized resources, according to the announcement. The virtual lab program is authorized under the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act.
The new pilots will be joining five others announced in August, and will be led by quantum experts and others across academia, industry, national labs, and government. In August, NSF anticipated adding more five pilots to its first batch, but the recent announcement revealed the sixth addition.
“Similar to the nature of entanglement itself, NSF is building the National Quantum Virtual Laboratory to serve as a national resource unconfined by the limitations of distance and space – or the boundaries of laboratory walls,” Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of NSF, said in a statement.
Each pilot, like the previous five, will receive $1 million over a year to create “real-world testing environments” to further the progress of quantum technologies. Pilots will look at “novel methods” that can provide distributed access to resources necessary to exploit “quantum phenomena,” the announcement notes.
“Quantum phenomena can be used in principle to create networks with practically impenetrable security, computers that can solve currently intractable problems, biomedical sensors that can provide doctors with cellular-level information and more. Yet much work to test and achieve such technologies remains to be done,” said NSF.
The six new pilot projects and their focuses include:
- Advancing quantum simulations by developing analog quantum hardware and various techniques with applications in quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, and nuclear physics which aim to harness quantum computing to manage exponential complexities within quantum systems.
- Building a high-performance 16-node quantum networking testbed capable of disturbing entanglement at rates more than five times greater than current approaches and over 100 kilometers in distance. This network aims to enable the development of new secure quantum communications protocols and distributed quantum sensors and computers.
- Building a quantum computing platform to produce error detection and correction required to achieve practical quantum computing.
- Creating a 60 logical qubit quantum computer capable of achieving a low error rate by incorporating advances across quantum hardware, software, architecture, and systems engineering.
- Exploiting the entanglement of multi-qubit systems in the measurement of properties of molecular and solid-state systems to achieve a “quantum advantage” or demonstrate that quantum computers can solve problems that can’t be solved with classical, non-quantum technology.
- Enabling quantum-based spectroscopic measurements for real-world applications including creating quantum photonic integrated circuits used in high-precision measurements in various industries such as microelectronics and healthcare.
Workforce training and educational opportunities will also be provided as part of the NSF NQVL to help grow the nation’s STEM workforce and “develop leaders for the quantum-based industries of the future,” the announcement added, falling in line with directives from the National Quantum Initiative Act.
The 11 total pilot project teams are being asked to submit proposals replying to the latest NSF NQVL funding solicitation. Teams selected to receive funding will design and use testbeds to create prototypes of quantum-based technologies and advance their projects to the next stage. Activities will be coordinated by a central hub that NSF will select later on in the NQVL development process, and submissions are limited to design and implementation phase projects only.
