Performance Magnetic Shielding For Commercial Quantum Technologies

There is a global race to build the world's first practical quantum computers. One of the many challenges in building a quantum computer (as well as other quantum technologies including sensors) is shielding the superconducting circuits from ambient magnetic fields. Currently solutions create a large volume and weight of fixed magnetic shields that takes up valuable space and cooling power within a cryostat. These existing large volume shields are difficult to maintain in the limited cooling capacity of a quantum circuit compatible cryostat. This ultimately limits the potential of a quantum computer or quantum sensor to scale to commercial levels. The commonly employed solution to this problem is to use a combination of high permeability and superconducting shields around the device. As superconducting circuits become larger and more complex the limitations of this approach become more apparent.

This project will design, simulate, manufacture, and test a magnetic shielding solution that employs active magnetic shielding. This will confirm the feasibility of employing active magnetic shielding for quantum processors within a cryostat to reduce the weight and size overheads associated with current state-of-the-art shielding methods. The use of active magnetic shielding is an entirely novel approach within quantum computing, though it has been successfully utilised for alternative technologies, including quantum gravity sensors. This project is taking an established method and applying it to an entirely new technology area that has highly specific and challenging magnetic shield requirements. The novelty will be in demonstrating that these strict performance requirements can be delivered using cryogenic passive shielding and active magnetic shielding, thus demonstrating a clear path to scaling the technology to commercial levels. Success in this project would represent a significant disruption to the current state-of-the-art approaches to quantum computing platform development.