European quantum scientists have laid out a revised roadmap detailing the way research in quantum technology will be taken forward, including research into quantum sensing and imaging.
Published in the New Journal of Physics, leading European quantum researchers summarise the field’s current status, and examine its challenges and goals.
In the field of imaging, quantum science has applications in microscopy, pattern recognition and segmentation in images, according to Professors Fedor Jelezko, Piet Schmidt, and Ian Walmsley, authors of the chapter on quantum sensing.
Quantum science opens up the possibility of detecting details in images beyond the standard wavelength limit, with low light levels, or in the presence of strong background illumination.
Correlations between quantum light beams also enables new modes of imaging such as 'ghost imaging', the authors stated, in which an image of an object illuminated by one beam is acquired by a camera looking at a different beam, that did not impinge upon the object.
The European Commission's €1 billion quantum flagship programme is now underway, while similar programmes in China and the USA are also running to develop quantum technologies. In the UK, the quantum enhanced imaging research hub, or Quantic, has projects on gravity sensors, gas imaging cameras, and systems that can sense objects around corners.
Introducing the collection of articles in the New Journal of Physics, Dr. Max Riedel and Professor Tommasso Calarco noted: 'Within the last two decades, quantum technologies have made tremendous progress, moving from Nobel Prize-winning experiments on quantum physics into a cross-disciplinary field of applied research.
'One success factor for the rapid advancement of quantum technology is a well-aligned global research community with a common understanding of the challenges and goals. In Europe, this community has profited from several EC funded coordination projects, which, among other things, have coordinated the creation of a quantum technology roadmap.'
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