News / Highlights / Colloquium
EPJ QT Highlight - Progress in terrestrial very long baseline atom interferometry
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- Published on 12 May 2025
The second of a series of workshops, held in London in April 2024, saw over 250 experts make progress towards a blueprint for a kilometre-long atom interferometer.
Interferometry is a technique that extracts information from the interference patterns of superimposed waves, most typically electromagnetic waves. However, atom interferometry, as its name implies, instead uses atoms that are treated as waves through wave-particle duality. Atom interferometers can make exceptionally precise measurements, for example to test foundational physical principles or detect gravitational waves. This decade, international experts in terrestrial very long baseline atom interferometry (TVLBAI) have met for two workshops; progress reported at the second of these, held in London in April 2024, has recently been published in EPJ Quantum Technology.
EPJ QT Highlight - Generating true randomness with quantum measurements
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- Published on 10 February 2025
A new approach can generate random information with extremely high efficiency through a process involving the emission and subsequent detection of single photons
From simulation to cryptography, randomness is a vital resource in many areas of technology. Ideally, random sequences can be created by measuring nondeterministic processes, whose outcomes are inherently unpredictable. Currently, many systems rely on pseudorandom processes such as thermal noise or chaotic oscillation, which exhibit some unpredictability, but are still fundamentally deterministic.
Through new research published in EPJ Quantum Technology, Jonas Almlöf and colleagues at Ericsson Research and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, show how these challenges can be overcome by exploiting the inherently random principles of quantum mechanics.
Their approach offers a realistic route to generating completely unbiased random sequences of information, and also enables far greater efficiency compared to existing methods.
EPJ QT Highlight - Access to burgeoning quantum technology field could be widened by open master educational model
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- Published on 04 March 2024
Quantum technology offers major societal benefits, but its growth depends on the supply of a qualified workforce.
Quantum Technology is based on the engineering of devices that make use of the quantum properties of matter. One of the most prominent avenues of this technology is quantum computing, which may be able to leverage quantum bits (qubits) to perform calculations more efficiently than classical computers. Technology with this “quantum advantage” will also operate in the background of our lives, providing ultra-secure communications and high-precision sensors and clocks.
The applications of quantum technology have led to a boom in investment worldwide; with this technology expected to have a huge societal impact. But to maintain this burgeoning industry, it is crucial that graduates with training in quantum technology enter the workforce. Plus, for the European Union to stay ahead in the quantum tech race, the workforce must assemble on a much shorter timescale than the 3 to 5 years (or more) of a PhD program.
In a new paper in EPJ Quantum Technology, author Simon Goorney, from Aarhus University, Denmark, and his co-authors describe the development of Open Master, a new form of transnational education, that could serve as a means of enhancing accessibility to specialist expertise in quantum technology. The ultimate goal of the pilot scheme, which operated over the academic year of 2021 to 2022, was to use the experience to conceptualise a model for the future of quantum technology education.
EPJ Quantum Technology: New Review Article The Deep Space Quantum Link (DSQL)
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- Published on 12 October 2022
Space-based quantum optical links support future networking applications for quantum sensing, quantum communications, and quantum information science. In addition, such links enable new scientific experiments impossible to reach in terrestrial experiments. The Deep Space Quantum Link (DSQL) is a spacecraft mission concept that aims to use extremely long-baseline quantum optical links to test fundamental quantum physics in novel special and general relativistic regimes.
In a new Review article just published in EPJ Quantum Technology, an international author team provide an overview of a two-year long study of how quantum optics in space could be used to conduct new tests of fundamental physics, in compliment to proposed tests utilizing matter or clocks. The manuscript describes the findings of the NASA-funded study, and describes some of the technology requirements and outstanding mission design studies necessary to move forward with the mission.
EPJ QT Highlight - Quantum control for advanced technology: Past and present
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- Published on 29 July 2022
Quantum devices are a promising technological advance for the future, but this will hinge on the application of quantum optimal control top real-world devices. A new review looks at the status of the field as it stands.
One of the cornerstones of the implementation of quantum technology is the creation and manipulation of the shape of external fields that can optimise the performance of quantum devices. Known as quantum optimal control, this set of methods comprises a field that has rapidly evolved and expanded over recent years.
A new review paper published in EPJ Quantum Technology and authored by Christiane P. Koch, Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin along with colleagues from across Europe assesses recent progress in the understanding of the controllability of quantum systems as well as the application of quantum control to quantum technologies. As such, it lays out a potential roadmap for future technology.
EPJ QT Highlight - Steps towards post-quantum security by Aleksey Fedorov
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- Published on 21 July 2021
Prof. Dr. Aleksey Fedorov is a Junior Principal Investigator at the Russian Quantum Center, Professor of Physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and founder of startup companies in quantum technologies. His research is related to quantum information technologies and quantum many-body physics. His paper about world-first quantum-secured blockchain was covered in MIT Technology Review, Business Insider, Forbes and put in the list of "the hottest top 5%" of all research outputs by Altmetrics. Aleksey was selected for ’30-under-30’ for Forbes Russia.
Life in our society is suffused with information technologies. Many of our activities — ranging from online shopping and chatting to operating production environments and management systems — are based on collecting, processing, and transmitting data. One of the key aspects in this regard is security. Surely, the history of the problem of ensuring information security is virtually as long as human history. However, for modern society the issue of information security has become truly vital: unauthorized access to various kinds of information could lead to major losses, including financial losses and loss of reputation, for governments and businesses alike.
Continue reading Aleksey Fedorov’s post here.
Welcoming Prof. Kai Bongs as new Editor-in-Chief of EPJ Quantum Technology
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- Published on 26 January 2018
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Professor Kai Bongs from the University of Birmingham, UK, has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of EPJ Quantum Technology.
Prof. Bongs is the director of the UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Metrology, a consortium of researchers from 11 universities, NPL and over 120 companies, which focuses in translating quantum science enabled precision measurements with cold atoms into technology and economic benefit. He has been working in the field of cold atoms for over 20 years. After studying Physics up to his PhD in the group of Prof. Wolfgang Ertmer at the University of Hannover and a postdoctoral appointment on atom interferometry in the group of Mark Kasevich at Yale University, he did his Habilitation on quantum gas mixtures working with Prof. Klaus Sengstock at the University of Hamburg. Since 2007 he holds a chair at the University of Birmingham heading the group of quantum matter and directing the Birmingham part of the Midlands Ultracold Atom Research Centre, MUARC. His research achievements have been recognised by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
Prof. Bongs takes on this position after the founding Editor, Prof. Gerard Milburn stepped down at the end of 2017. We take this opportunity to show our gratitude to Prof. Milburn for his role in bringing EPJ Quantum Technology to life and for his hard work and leadership in the past four years.
EPJ QT Highlight - How does Earth’s spacetime deformation affect quantum communications?
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- Published on 30 May 2017
Jan Kohlrus investigates relativitic effects to consider when setting up quantum communication systems.
The interplay and overlap between relativity and quantum theory are among the most complex and challenging open problems of modern theoretical physics. This grey area has been extensively studied on the theoretical side, sometimes following very speculative and exotic directions, while very few experiments have been proposed in a way that rigorously incorporates relativity and quantum features.
The purpose of our work is to propose feasible experiments that involve quantum fields in a relativistic framework. In our recent article in EPJ Quantum Technology, we study how observers that undergo different motion, and experience different strengths of the gravitational field, measure pulses of light that propagate from one user to another. In particular, we look at quantum communication schemes between Earth and satellite links, as well as between two satellites.
Continue reading Jan’s post here.
EPJ QT Highlight - Quantum security from small satellites
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- Published on 17 May 2017
Shoebox sized satellites could be the key to fast-track development of space quantum communication, writes author Daniel Oi in a contribution to the SpringerOpen blog.
Quantum computing threatens the security of public key cryptosystems that secure the internet. But what quantum takes away, it can also give back. The technique of quantum key distribution (QKD) promises codes that are guaranteed by physics to be, in principle, unbreakable.
In EPJ Quantum Technology, we propose a CubeSat Quantum Communications Mission (CQuCoM) with a vision towards a globe-spanning constellation of QKD satellites. We are an international consortium of six research entities and one company across six countries.
Continue reading the blog post here.
EPJ Quantum Technology Review - Macroscopic Quantum Resonators (MAQRO): 2015 update
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- Published on 04 April 2016
Do the laws of quantum physics still hold for macroscopic objects - this is at the heart of Schrödinger’s cat paradox - or do gravitation or yet unknown effects set a limit for massive particles? What is the fundamental relation between quantum physics and gravity? Ground-based experiments addressing these questions may soon face limitations due to limited free-fall times and the quality of vacuum and microgravity. The proposed mission Macroscopic Quantum Resonators (MAQRO) may overcome these limitations and allow researchers to address such fundamental questions. MAQRO harnesses recent developments in quantum optomechanics, high-mass matter-wave interferometry as well as state-of-the-art space technology to push macroscopic quantum experiments towards their ultimate performance limits and to open new horizons for applying quantum technology in space. The main scientific goal is to probe the vastly unexplored ‘quantum-classical’ transition for increasingly massive objects, testing the predictions of quantum theory for objects in a size and mass regime unachievable in ground-based experiments. The hardware will largely be based on available space technology.
In this review article, the authors present the MAQRO proposal submitted in response to the ESA's 4th Cosmic Vision call for a medium-sized mission (M4) with a possible launch in 2025, and review the progress with respect to the original MAQRO proposal made in 2010. In particular, the updated proposal overcomes several critical issues of the original proposal by relying on established experimental techniques from high-mass matter-wave interferometry and by introducing novel ideas for particle loading and manipulation. Moreover, the mission design was improved to better fulfil the stringent environmental requirements for macroscopic quantum experiments.
