Principal Investigator Dirk Englund
The Internet is among the most significant inventions of the 20th Century. We are now poised for the development of a quantum internet to exchange quantum information and distribute entanglement among quantum computers that could be great distances apart. This kind of quantum internet would have a range of applications that aren’t possible in a classical world, including long-distance unconditionally-secure communication, precision sensing and navigation, and distributed quantum computing. But we still need to develop or perfect many types of components and protocols to build such a quantum internet. This talk will consider some of these components, including quantum memories based on atomic defects in semiconductors, circuits for manipulating single electronic and nuclear spins, efficient spin-photon interfaces, and photonic integrated circuits. The talk will also provide an overview of quantum communications protocols that are now running in a Boston-area quantum network.