The U.S. Department of Energy wants to develop a national quantum internet to enable more secure communications and advance scientific research in areas such as gravitational wave detection.

Officials presented a blueprint strategy for the effort in a Thursday press conference at the University of Chicago. The 38-page paper outlines key goals, as well as research challenges that will need to be addressed before the concept can be realized. 

The quantum properties of subatomic particles lend themselves not only to building sophisticated non-classical computers but, in theory, also to creating new kinds of networks. The quantum internet proposed by the DOE is a network that would transmit data in the form of qubits rather than bits. It’s a concept that still faces significant technical hurdles, but could provide significant benefits if realized.

The headline advantage of quantum networks is security. Qubits zipping across a network link are subject to the observer effect, meaning that an eavesdropping hacker would modify the qubits by observing them. This provides a potentially highly reliable way for network operators to detect security breaches, hence why the concept is drawing so much interest from governments and industry.  

The technology could also prove to be a valuable research tool. Quantum networks might one day be used to power clusters of ultra-accurate quantum sensors for detecting gravitational waves, tracking volcano eruptions and a wide range of other scientific applications.

The 38-page strategy blueprints published by the DOE on Thursday provides a high-level roadmap for the development of a national quantum internet. It lays out, among others, technical barriers that still need to be overcome. The key research objectives the report points out include building quantum networking devices, developing routing techniques and figuring out a way to correct data errors that arise while qubits travel across quantum networks.

Once the necessary building blocks are ready, the plan is to build out the national quantum internet piecemeal. As one of the initial steps, the DOE believes it will be important to verify the security of future quantum networking protocols by testing them on existing fiber networks. The vision is to over time deploy quantum network links between campuses, between cities and eventually across states as well.

“Eventually, we will connect all 17 DOE National Labs as the backbone of the Quantum Internet,” detailed Paul Dabbar, the DOE’s under secretary of energy for science. “We’ll also add in universities and private sector partners, working with a broad community of individuals and institutions with diverse and complementary skill sets. Together, we’ll create something truly groundbreaking that will transform our lives.”

The University of Chicago, where the press conference for the plan was held, is playing a major role in the effort. Its researchers have worked with one of the DOE’s labs to build a prototype 52-mile quantum network that recently completed its first successful entanglement experiments. To enable further research, that network will be connected with another operated by the Fermilab in nearby Batavia, Illinois to create an 80-mile scientific testbed.

“Our National Laboratories house world-class facilities to image materials with subatomic resolution and state-of-the-art supercomputers to model their behavior,” University of Chicago professor David Awschalom said in a statement. “These powerful resources are critical to accelerating progress in quantum information science and engineering, and to leading this rapidly evolving field in collaboration with academic and corporate partners.”

Photo: DOE