University of Calgary Physicists on Team Developing Practical Quantum Internet

(UCalgaryNews) University of Calgary physicists are developing components for a quantum network, including quantum memory which can store quantum information.
For the study, Dr. Daniel Oblak, PhD, assistant professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science at University of Calgary. visited the Caltech lab in Pasadena, Calif. and the Fermilab near Chicago to do hands-on work, and also advised on implementing parts of the experiment.
Dr. Christoph Simon, PhD, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is involved in a larger collaboration with Dr. Maria Spiropulu, PhD, an experimental physicist at Caltech, on making the quantum internet more broadly, served as an adviser on the study.
Building a functional quantum internet is so complex it will require a new model for quantum collaboration, the kind of “big science” typical of high-energy physics and astrophysics, Simon and Spiropulu wrote in an article for the American Physical Society News. This includes consortia “with expertise spanning classical and quantum [physics], public and private [sectors], hardware and software, science and society.”
“We will be a key partner in such consortia based on our past experience, but also some of our up-and-coming experiments and research,” Simon says.
For example, the new study builds on a 2016 experiment Oblak participated in, when UCalgary and international researchers successfully teleported a photon through six kilometres of The City of Calgary’s fibre optic cable infrastructure.
The team includes researchers from Caltech, Fermilab, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of Calgary, and Harvard University.
Their study, “Teleportation Systems Toward a Quantum Internet,” is published in PRX Quantum, a physical review journal.