STRATEGIC PACKAGE: Superconductors-Based Quantum Technologies

Quantum technologies (QT) is a truly interdisciplinary research area that aims to build novel functional devices based on quantum principles and thus showing unique characteristics when compared with conventional devices based on classical physics. The future feasibility of QT critically depends on one's ability to create, protect, manipulate and measure quantum states in physical, chemical or biological systems. In order to be in the quantum regime, a system must have energy levels that are well protected from all possible sources of decoherence. In general, decoherence has two major contributions - dephasing and energy relaxation - both inflicted by the environment. Superconducting materials are a natural choice for building solid-state quantum circuits, since superconductivity offers coherence. Superconductors have an energy region, in which only one energy level exists, the Fermi level, while all other energy levels are separated by the superconducting energy gap: the Cooper pairs of conducting electrons condense to this energy level, which is automatically protected from low-energy excitations because of the presence of the gap. This allows to prepare, to control, and to manipulate quantum states in superconductors-based nanostructures for the use in various devices whose operation is based upon quantum principles.

A niche of superconductors-based QT, including the development and use of superconducting qubits, remains almost untamed by the UK researchers. According to the recent IoP Review, the UK plays a major role in several other areas of research on quantum computer technologies: studies of spin qubits (Oxford), semiconductor quantum dots (Sheffield), trapped ions (Oxford, ICL, Sussex, NPL), trapped atoms (Strathclyde, Oxford), and development of photon-based QT (Toshiba-Cambridge, Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford), however, "... the UK has not yet done much work on superconducting qubits...". These solid-state qubits were the first implemented experimentally by Nakamura, Pashkin and Tsai at NEC, and our ambition is to create, by relocation of Y. Pashkin to Lancaster, the new Centre of excellence which will broadly address the development and applications of superconductors-based QT, successfully competing against the existing renown QT groups, such as those at Yale (USA), CEA Saclay (France), TUDelft (the Netherlands), and Q-Station at UCSB (USA). The new center of excellence in experimental research in superconductors-based QT (SQT) will study fundamental properties of a wide range of superconductors-based nanostructures aiming to develop their applications in quantum metrology, nanoelectromechanics and sensing applications, and - in the long term - quantum information processing.

The promise of Quantum Technologies to generate positive impact on the future of industries in the UK is the reason for this direction of research be included in the EPSRC Grand Challenges in Physics. We expect that the studies of extreme properties of superconductors-based nanostructures by the new group will result in making quantum technologies reality, by developing novel sensors and various high-end instrumentation. On the side of fundamental science, the new group will disseminate its findings through publications in specialized and general high-impact journals, such as Physical Review Letter, Science, Nature Magazine group. On the side of instrumentation development, the new results obtained by the group will be disseminated via participation in nanotechnology forums, and by advertising prototype devices at national and international technological exhibitions.

The first and most direct practical use of the SQT aimed by the new group will be the development of quantized current standard, which one of the key goals in the Euramet Strategy 2020, which will be followed by the development of ultrasensitive nano-sensors. These innovations will find their way into high-value high-tech industries through the direct collaborations and partnerships, and they will have a positive impact on the UK-based high-tech enterprises of various sizes, such as the already committed collaborators Oxford Instruments, National Physical Laboratory Plc, Graphene Industries Ltd. Pashkin's group will also work closely with the new spin-off Lancaster Cryogenics Ltd, by producing new types of temperature gauge and sensors.

The development of new instrumentation will also have positive impact on the academic community in the UK, reaching far beyond physics. By creating measurement devices with ultra-high sensitivity, the new group will enhance various branches of materials science, chemistry and biology - all in a constant need of new highly sensitive instrumentation. Based on that, a new spin-off may be created at Lancaster, to manufacture devices based on the use of quantum technology for sensing.

Enabling new type of information processes and signals analysis would have a major impact on engineering and communication, thus, creating potential for new investments in the UK from the private sector and attracting multinationals. To this end, Pashkin will actively cooperate with Nippon Electronics Corporation (NEC, Japan), thorough direct collaborative projects and knowledge transfer. Also, the group is on its way to establishing a collaboration with Samsung (Korea), on the development of superconducting proximity-effect transistor based on graphene and other two-dimensional materials.

The research projects run by the new group will help to train the new generation of highly skilled researchers and technologists. In the first instance, these will be junior researcher and PhD students involved in the advance nanofabrication and characterization processes funded by the proposed Strategic Package. We have already been told, during the recent site visit by Oxford Instruments, that such experts, trained by Pashkin's group, will be more than welcome to join their workforce. Beyond that, the new group will be actively involved in training activities of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training NOWNANO (in which the CI of this application is a co-director), by offering specialist training in SQT and hosting students for research projects, and it will train PhD students on the recently signed joint doctoral program between LU and An Najah University in Nablus, who will return to their home University as faculty to build up higher education in sciences in Palestine.