Skip to main content

Highlight

A Quantum Switch

Projects:
IGERT: Quantum Coherent Optical and Matter Systems
Institution:
Northwestern University
Primary Strategic Goal:
Discovery: Foster research that will advance the frontiers of knowledge, emphasizing areas of greatest opportunity and potential benefit and establishing the Nation as a global leader in fundamental transformational science and engineering.
Secondary Strategic Goal:
Learning: Build the Nation's research capability through critical investments in advanced instrumentation, facilities, cyber infrastructure, and experimental tools.

Achievement/Results

The Kumar group, including IGERT student Matthew A. Hall, developed a new switching device that takes quantum communication to a new level (described in section b)). The device is a practical step toward routing quantum bits, or entangled particles of light, at very high speeds along a shared network of fiber-optic cable without losing the entanglement information embedded in the quantum bits. The switch could be used toward achieving two goals of the information technology world: a quantum Internet, where encrypted information would be completely secure, and networking super-fast quantum computers. The achievement describing secure communications above was featured in Science 360 “the NSF news outlet” on 14th March 2011: http://news.science360.gov/archives/20110314;


http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/arti...

Address Goals

As noted, the device has the potential to play a key role in establishing a future quantum internet and the industry that will surround it. Students, IGERT along with others, raised in the surrounding environment in which the technology was developed should be well positioned to contribute to its development.

Posted By:
John Ketterson
Posted:
November 21, 2011