Projects
SuperQuant - Microwave metrology for superconducting quantum circuits
EMPIR Project - Call Fundamental 2020 (20FUN07)
Website: https://www.ptb.de/empir2021/superquant
The project will lead the way to fundamental microwave metrology at cryogenic temperatures to support the booming quantum technology industry. We will trigger a paradigm change in this field by interdisciplinary combinations of technologies, including superconducting quantum circuits, semiconductors, integrated and conventional photonics, and plasmonics. Participants approaches will enable, e.g., a quantum standard of microwave power and a quantum-traceable cryogenic sampling oscilloscope with 1 THz bandwidth. One of the most ambitious goals is to develop an optically-integrated quantized arbitrary waveform generator that will enable energy- and cost-efficient generation of thousands of microwave signals at cryogenic temperatures.
INRiM will be involved in the development of a platform for traceable measurements of scattering parameters in cryogenic environment in the mK range and in the metrological characterization of superconducting quantum power sensors.
QUANTUM RADAR
Quantum illumination (QI) is a sensing technique, introduced by S. Lloyd [1] and perfected by S. H. Tan et al. [2] in 2008, which exploits quantum entanglement between photons to enhance the detection of low-reflectivity objects immersed in a bright thermal background.
Unlike most of the applications that exploit the quantum properties of matter, such as quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum cryptography, this detection protocol is superior to its classical counterpart in the presence of noise and decoherence sources. It has been demonstrated [2] that, for a given number NS of photon composing the detecting signal, in the presence of very low signal to noise ratios (SNR ≤ 0.01), this procedure ensures a reduction of 6 dB in the error detection probability (Pe) exponent, compared to state-of-the-art classical detection protocol based on coherent light emission from laser or maser, and homodyne detection.
[1] S. Lloyd, Enhanced sensitivity of photodetection via quantum illumination. Science,Science 321, 1463-1465 (2008).
[2] S.-H. Tan, B. I. Erkmen, V. Giovannetti, S. Guha, S. Loyd, L. Maccone, S. Pirandola, and J. H. Shapiro, Quantum illumination with Gaussian States, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 253601 (2008).
SUPERGALAX
HORIZON2020 Project - Call H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01
Website: https://supergalax.eu/
Detection of single photons in the microwave range has a number of applications ranging from galactic dark matter axions searches to quantum computing and metrology. A novel approach to acquisition of extremely low energy microwave signals (~1 GHz), based on the general concept of a passive quantum detection is proposed. For such highly sensitive detector (quantum antenna) the key novel concept which is intended to use is the coherent quantum network composed of a large amount of strongly interacting superconducting qubits embedded in a low dissipative superconducting resonator.
INRiM will be involved in the development of A Parametric Down Conversion (PDC) microwave photon source based on the Traveling Wave Josephson Parametric Amplifier (TW-JPA) with a clock frequency of few kHz.
DARTWARS
INFN Project - National Scientific Committee 5 - Call "Development of quantum technologies applicable to fields of physics of interest to INFN"
Website: https://dartwars.unimib.it/
DARTWARS (Detector Array Readout with Traveling Wave AmplifieRS) is a quantum technologies project with the aim to boost the sensitivity of experiments based on low-noise superconducting detectors and qubits. This goal will be reached through the development of wideband superconducting amplifiers with noise at the quantum limit and the implementation of a quantum-limited read-out in different types of superconducting detectors and qubit.
INRiM will be involved in the development of Josephson Travelling Wave Parametric Amplifiers (JTWPA).
EMPIR Project - Call Fundamental 2017
Website: https://sites.google.com/inrim.it/parawave/home
State-of-the-art cryogenic semiconductor amplifiers possess an electrical noise that is at least a factor of ten too high for quantum sensitive experiments and key applications such as quantum computing. This is a major obstacle for the development of superconducting quantum technology; superconducting quantum-limited microwave amplifiers, available in research laboratories and commercially, all suffer from compromises in specification. A broadband quantum-limited microwave amplifier is therefore a real technological need.
The emerging field of quantum optics with microwaves promises an unexplored metrological regime of ultra-accurate measurements.
The Josephson Travelling Wave Parametric Amplifier (JTWPA) recently proposed is a cryogenic amplifier with added noise no larger than the one determined by quantum-mechanical principles, i.e. it is an close-to-ideal parametric amplifier. The interesting aspect from the point of view of the “quantum radar” is that, as a parametric amplifier, it is predicted to have also the spontaneous emission of entangled pairs of photons necessary for the purpose.