SQuaD meets QR.X

SQuaD as a Guest at the final QR.X Mee­ting:

With around 90 par­ti­ci­pan­ts – inclu­ding repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of the Umbrel­la Pro­ject for Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on in Ger­ma­ny (Schirm­pro­jekt Quan­ten­kom­mu­ni­ka­ti­on Deutsch­land, SQuaD) – the sta­tus semi­nar of the BMBF-fun­ded joint pro­ject Quantumrepeater.Link (QR.X) took place on 6 and 7 June 2024 at the Phy­sik­zen­trum Bad Hon­nef. In August 2021, more than 40 part­ners from aca­de­mic rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons, insti­tu­tes and com­pa­nies joi­n­ed forces to deve­lop a cen­tral com­po­nent of future quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­works: the quan­tum repea­ter. The aim of the cur­rent fun­ding pha­se is to demons­tra­te the basic func­tion­a­li­ties of a quan­tum repea­ter. To this end, hard­ware com­pon­ents are to be opti­mi­zed and tes­ted on test tracks under rea­li­stic con­di­ti­ons – i.e. out­side pro­tec­ted labo­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ments – and assem­bled into an ope­ra­tio­nal quan­tum repea­ter demons­tra­tor.
After three years of work, the part­ners pre­sen­ted the high­lights of the pro­ject. In his ope­ning speech, pro­ject spea­k­er Chris­toph Becher loo­ked back on the key achie­ve­ments of QR.X, inclu­ding the opti­miza­ti­on of exis­ting quan­tum hard­ware com­pon­ents and the deve­lo­p­ment of impro­ved quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on pro­to­cols. As part of the pro­ject, for exam­p­le, ent­an­gle­ment bet­ween rubi­di­um atoms and pho­tons in the C‑band was gene­ra­ted for the first time over a 101 km long glass fiber link with a qua­li­ty of more than 70%. In QR.X, four fiber test tracks were also put into ope­ra­ti­on and used to demons­tra­te basic pro­to­cols of quan­tum com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, ent­an­gle­ment dis­tri­bu­ti­on, and quan­tum tele­por­ta­ti­on. In addi­ti­on to the pre­sen­ta­ti­on of the results of the four plat­forms “Halb­lei­ter-Quan­ten­punk­te”, “Dia­mant-Farb­zen­tren”, “Ato­me und Ionen” and “Theo­rie” with 41 sub-pro­jects, the par­ti­ci­pan­ts of the sta­tus semi­nar could look for­ward to exci­ting expert lec­tures and two ses­si­ons with around 50 pos­ters. 

Pho­to: Prof. Dr. Chris­toph Becher wel­co­mes the par­ti­ci­pan­ts of the QR.X mee­ting.