By Dan O’Shea posted 03 Nov 2022
Amazon Web Services is behind one of the biggest cloud-based quantum computing services, but AWS also has been making contributions to the field through research. Its most recent research advancement, to be detailed in a paper scheduled to be published Friday in the journal Science, could have major implications for the evolution of quantum networks.
Scientists from AWS’s Center for Quantum Networking, which was launched earlier this year, and Harvard University, have developed a method for allowing quantum memories to operate at higher temperatures, which could reduce the costs of ultra-cool refrigeration usually required to keep memories very cold, and improve the performance and reliability of quantum repeaters needed to extend networking distances.
Researchers, including research paper authors David Levonian, Bart Machielse, YanQi Huan, and Pieter-Jan Stas, were able to “boost the operating temperature to something that makes your cryo systems about 10 times cheaper and smaller than they otherwise would need to be, and that really starts to move it [quantum memory] towards something that could be in a rack in a data center,” Levonian told IQT News.
He emphasized that much more needs to be done before this kind of advancement can be commercialized and before entanglement-based quantum networks using quantum repeaters can become widespread, as much work related to quantum networks, and more specifically to quantum repeaters, remains in a lab setting for now.
“The next steps, and I wouldn’t put a timeline on it, would be setting up networks of these repeater devices to show that you can set up a multi-hop QKD network with a couple of different users across distances that you wouldn’t be able to achieve with what’s available off the shelf now,” he said.
Levonian acknowledged, despite not being specific about AWS’ timeline for next steps, that the advancement could help accelerate the overall timing for deployment of entanglement-based QKD networks. At last week’s IQT Fall conference there was a great deal of discussion about the viability of prepare-and-measure QKD relative to the eventual development of entanglement-based networks, and it was clear from these discussions that several companies are pursuing and further developing both models.
Watch IQT News closely for further updates to this story.
Image: A scanning electron microscope image (courtesy of the AWS Center for Quantum Networking) of an array of nanophotonic quantum memories on a diamond chip. The photonic devices are millionths of an inch wide.
Dan O’Shea has covered telecommunications and related topics including semiconductors, sensors, retail systems, digital payments and quantum computing/technology for over 25 years.
