Arizona opens new home for the Center for Quantum Engineering

03 Oct 2024

Wyant College of Optical Sciences has moved the CQN into the new “quantum floor”.

From Ford Burkhart, in Tucson

A new home base for quantum-networking research, part of a large-scale national project, has formally opened its doors at the University of Arizona, in the center of Tucson.

The National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) was launched four years ago with an initial grant of $26 million from the National Science Foundation and a $26 million option to extend the NSF timetable.

With the University of Arizona in the lead, CQN’s core partners include Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Maryland.

Other partners include researchers at Brigham Young University, Howard University, Northern Arizona University, the University of Oregon and the University of Chicago.

Over the past summer, the University’s Wyant College of Optical Sciences moved the CQN into the “quantum floor” of a new seven-story, $99 million “innovation ecosystem” facility called the Grand Challenges Research Building.

‘Between quantum optics and classical optics’

CQN introduced the site, with labs, classrooms and offices, to the community on September 30th and welcomed dozens of researchers, students, industry visitors and others.

The work at CQN is “all pretty exciting,” said Amit Ashok, a professor who works “on the boundary between quantum optics and classical optics.” He runs the Intelligent Imaging and Sensing Lab (I2SL), which seeks to “quantify performance limits of imaging modalities.”

“We use elements of quantum engineering, to come up with a system design,” Ashok said. “You can resolve ten times better than the traditional systems, whether it is in space optics or looking at stars or looking on the microscale in optical microscopy. We cover the whole range.”

As for applications, Ashok said, “We are working with astronomers and hopefully in the next five years some of this technology will be in the large telescopes.”

Work on quantum networks is crucial to futuristic chapters like improving national security and encryption, finding new medicines, offering super-secure communications and new AI possibilities and speeding up gigantic computing solutions that once could take years.

Wyant College Dean Thomas Koch said, “We are finding ways to connect up quantum resources, whether it be a computer or a sensor. …. And you can connect them remotely, but you have to do it kind of one photon at a time. The trick is how to do that.”

“That’s a big piece of what this center is all about. The team has demonstrated some of the most important pieces of this technology.”

CQN has a mission of providing value creation to America's economy under its Innovation Ecosystem program, led by Alireza Shabani, CQN’s innovation director.

A key component of CQN's Innovation Ecosystem is a partnership with the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, a National Institute of Standards and Technology-led unit aimed at forming a bridge between quantum information science and engineering researchers and the industry.

CQN's industry partnerships also play a valuable role in defining application roadmaps to inform CQN's technical direction and research investments.

A major focus of the CQN team has been research to advance quantum materials and devices, quantum and classical processing required at network nodes, and quantum network protocols and architectures.