University of New Orleans mathematics professor Peter Bierhorst is a member of one of six National Science Foundation pilot projects selected to bridge scientific gaps between current quantum technological capabilities and those needed to fully harness quantum properties of energy and matter for practical uses.

Each pilot project will receive $1 million over 12 months to create real-world testing environments that can further the progress of quantum-related technologies. If the project is successful, it will be renewed for multiple years with an expanded budget. Bierhorst, an associate professor of mathematics, is a co-principal investigator on the project led by the University of Oregon. UNO’s share of the research award is $33,845. 

Bierhorst and the other team members aim to build a high-performance 16-node quantum networking testbed capable of distributing entanglement at rates more than five orders of magnitude greater than current approaches and over distances of up to 100 kilometers. The network will help enable development of new secure quantum communications protocols and new types of distributed quantum sensors and computers.

“Elementary particles like photons and electrons can be entangled with each other to create strange correlated phenomena, even if the particles are separated at great distances,” Bierhorst said. “This is generally done with a pair of particles, but it is also possible to entangle larger groups of particles. This project aims to build a network of up to 16 entangled photons, separated by great distances. This setup will be interesting for understanding fundamental physics, but will also have applications to secure communications, computation, sensing and position verification.”

These latest six projects to be selected are supported by the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory. Democratizing access and building national quantum science and technology capacity is part of NSF's strategy to fulfill the advancements identified in the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act.

“The quantum network refers to the multiple entangled photons, each located at separate positions,” Bierhorst said. “Just like in a classical computer network, you would send signals through wires. The eventual hope is that something like a ‘quantum internet’ will be able to do fundamentally new things by harnessing entanglement.”

In addition to UNO and the University of Oregon, other collaborators on the project include the University of North Dakota, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, HRL Laboratories and Boeing.