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Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology

Opportunities in quantum sensor applications

Kai Bongs

Published Mar 4, 2021• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Sensors have been named one of the top 10 emerging technologies of the year by the World Economic Forum in 2020. This talk will highlight some of the commercial opportunities opened up by quantum sensors based on atomic probe particles. These sensors promise to offer disruptive new capabilities in sensing what is underneath the ground, which parts of the brain are active and detecting small objects in the air. I will present new prototypes and first commercial spin-offs branching out form this exciting area of quantum technologies.

DOI
10.1117/12.2588438

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Quantum sensors have been named a top 10 emerging technology by the World Economic Forum in 2020. This is mainly driven by their imminent application potential and the ability to open up qualitatively new sensing areas, such as sensing into the ground, or seeing the brain at work. We are now just one step away from commercial breakthrough applications in civil engineering and clinical trials. With this success, the next step will be to develop integrated photonics components to open up mass markets in water, navigation and gaming. I will provide an overview of the working principle of an atomic quantum sensor and lay out the parameter needs for photonic integration.
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The current rise of quantum technology is compelled by quantum sensing research. Thousands of research labs are developing and testing a broad range of sensor prototypes. However, there is a lack of knowledge about specific applications and real-world use cases where the benefits of these sensors will be most pronounced. This study presents a comprehensive review of quantum sensing state-of-practice. It also provides a detailed analysis of how quantum sensing overcomes the existing limitations of sensor-driven systems’ precision and performance. Based on the review of over 500 quantum sensor prototype reports, we determined four groups of quantum sensors and discussed their readiness for commercial usage. We concluded that quantum magnetometry and quantum optics are the most advanced sensing technologies with empirically proven results. In turn, quantum timing and kinetics are still in the early stages of practical validation. In addition, we defined four systems domains in which quantum sensors offer a solution for existing limitations of conventional sensing technologies. These domains are 1) GPS-free positioning and navigating services, 2) time-based operations, 3) topological visibility, and 4) environment detection, prediction, and modeling. Finally, we discussed the current constraints of quantum sensing technologies and offered directions for future research.
Atomic sensors—devices that utilize individual atoms as the sensing mechanism—offer enormous prospects for high sensitivity, accuracy and immunity to environmental noise. This is because such sensors leverage quantum mechanical properties of the atom such as internal energy level splittings that do not change with time and are immune to sensor fabrication errors. While some of these sensors are now commercially available, they are still bulky instruments that must be individually assembled by hand and will not be widely disseminated in their current form. In this talk I will discuss a new architecture for quantum sensors based on miniaturized atomic beams, with applications to clocks, gyroscopes and photonic quantum devices.
Quantum sensing is the most exciting quantum technology and it has the most potential to change our lives in the next decade and beyond. Quantum sensors will offer new capabilities with benefits for medicine, defense, intelligence, extractive industries and many others. Quantum sensing is a precursor technology to quantum computing and communications. Quantum sensors use quantum properties and effects to measure or sense physical things. This chapter explores quantum sensing as a topic in its own right, because the capabilities of quantum sensing are surprising and offer new forms of knowledge discovery and at new levels of analysis. Furthermore quantum sensors are here today---indeed, they have been in use for more than fifty years.
"What are atoms doing in space anyways?" This talk will provide a brief overview of applications of quantum technologies in space ranging from precise timing and inertial measurements to fundamental physics. Quantum technologies have seen a wide field of applications in medicine, geosciences, computing and communications, in many cases bridging the gap from laboratory experiments to commercial products in the last decade. For terrestrial applications that is. But what about going to space? Quantum physics based sensors and experiments promise higher accuracy, sensitivity or better long term stability as they rely on immutable properties of atoms. When properly manipulated, these (ultra-)cold atoms are likely to outperform state of the art instruments. Experiments conducted on sounding rockets demonstrated important steps like Bose-Einstein Condensate creation during a few minutes in microgravity, enabling more advanced quantum experiments in the future. The International Space Station and the Tiangong Space Station host dedicated experiments like ultrastable clocks as well as flexible research infrastructure for fundamental research benefitting from long free-fall times. However, the deployment of such technologies on satellites is not as advanced. Satellite missions utilizing quantum sensors or performing long term experiments are subject to studies and proposals backed by a broad scientific community aiming at better understanding of climate change, interplanetary navigation or tests of general relativity. First steps towards realization of such missions are taken by ESA, NASA and various national space agencies as well as universities funded by national agencies or the EU. This talk will detect the current state of atoms in space and give an overview of active programs to deploy quantum sensors on operational satellite missions. The focus is on future applications in geosciences and related fields employing the same technology.