UNIQORN - Affordable Quantum Communication for Everyone: Revolutionizing the Quantum Ecosystem from Fabrication to Application

What do you want to achieve in this project?

We want to develop quantum devices for the mass market, based on small, cheap, robust and reliable systems. To make the second quantum revolution a success, devices need the same level of integration that microelectronic systems have achieved. UNIQORN’s mission is therefore to extend the existing photonic integration technology to accommodate quantum applications, which often have very stringent requirements and need specialised components.

We will extend the functionality of the basic components to realise complex devices for quantum communication, which are presently found on metre-size breadboards, on millimetre-size chips. Finally, field trials will be performed to demonstrate the readiness of our technology.

How will European citizens benefit from this project, both from the technology developments it accomplishes as well as the basic science breakthroughs it may achieve?

The outcomes of the project will provide the building blocks for quantum devices that can be used in home appliances and maybe even in smartphones one day. By offering cost-optimised quantum technology, European citizens will have personal access to this new technology.

The project addresses some of the burning societal challenges such as secure societies, critical infrastructure and e-health. For example, the quantum applications we envisage to demonstrate with our system-on-chip implementations will allow highly secure encryption, secure and privacy-protecting database searches. For the more distant goal of a quantum internet, we will demonstrate a quantum-router for on-demand entanglement distribution in optical-fibre networks.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No820474.