RAISE-TAQS: Room-Temperature Quantum Sensing and Computation using DNA-based Excitonic Circuits

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Moore's Law, the well-known observation that the number of transistors in silicon-based integrated circuits and personal computing devices doubles approximately every year, has ended. A major challenge for the next decade is to identify viable alternatives to traditional, silicon-based computing. Such alternatives are needed to meet the ever-increasing worldwide computational demands in almost all areas of life. Quantum information processors may be one viable alternative to meet this demand. By taking advantage of quantum mechanical phenomena, the computational power of quantum computers may exceed by orders of magnitude that of conventional, silicon-based integrated circuits. However, to date quantum information processing is required to operate at ultra-cold temperatures in highly isolated and protected environments. No viable quantum information processing platform exists that functions at room temperature or in wet condition. If they did exist, such quantum systems could be used for tasks such as quantum-enhanced sensing. In this project, structured DNA circuits are used to construct quantum-based processing and sensing devices that operate at room temperature and in the liquid state. Foundational principles of DNA-based quantum sensing and signal processing devices are being established and applied to practical quantum information processing challenges to demonstrate viability of this revolutionary approach to address diverse societal computing needs. An interdisciplinary team of investigators from chemistry, biological engineering and materials science, and electrical engineering will pursue this transformative approach towards room-temperature information processors, and train the next-generation of interdisciplinary quantum computer scientists and engineers Classical silicon-based computing has reached its limit for solving increasingly complex, resource-intensive computational challenges in diverse application areas. In contrast, quantum-based systems enable a myriad of possibilities for transformative technological advances in simulation, sensing, computation, and metrology by harnessing quantum mechanical phenomena. Through the unique physics of quantum mechanics, quantum systems process or exchange information that can surpass classical computing architectures and measure environmental variables with unprecedented sensitivity. However, deployment of quantum systems to diverse application arenas has been encumbered by the fragility of quantum states to the ever-present noisy thermal bath, thereby limiting the operation of current quantum devices to cryogenic temperatures. For this reason, fundamental investigations into new quantum information processing and sensing architectures are needed, particularly for the deployment of devices for room-temperature and biomedical applications. Here, novel quantum circuits are developed based on controlled excitonic states of biomolecular materials. The structural control and single-molecule addressability of highly programmable DNA nanostructures are leveraged together with synthetic dyes as an engineering platform for quantum-coherent excitonic systems. Controlling the positions and energies of distinct excitonic states using DNA-based scaffolds enables the integration of qubits into higher-order circuits to create multi-qubit systems and devices. Closely coupled theory and experiment are used to design and evaluate emergent qubit function. Novel, high-impact room-temperature quantum sensing and information processing devices are fabricated and characterized, with potential for integration into prototypical next-generation quantum technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.