STRATEGIC PACKAGE: Superconductors-Based Quantum Technologies

量子技术(Qt)是一个真正的跨学科研究领域，旨在构建基于量子原理的新型功能器件，从而与基于经典物理的传统器件相比显示出独特的特征。Qt未来的可行性关键取决于一个人在物理、化学或生物系统中创造、保护、操纵和测量量子态的能力。为了处于量子状态，系统的能级必须受到良好的保护，不受所有可能的消相干源的影响。一般来说，退相干有两个主要贡献--退相和能量弛豫--两者都是由环境造成的。超导材料是建造固态量子电路的自然选择，因为超导提供了相干。超导体有一个能级区域，其中只存在一个能级，即费米能级，而所有其他能级都被超导能隙隔开：库珀导电电子对凝聚到这个能级，由于能级的存在，它自动受到保护，不受低能激发的影响。这使得可以准备、控制和操纵基于超导体的纳米结构中的量子态，用于各种基于量子原理的设备中。基于超导体的Qt的利基市场，包括超导量子比特的开发和使用，几乎仍然没有被英国研究人员驯服。根据最近的IoP评论，英国在量子计算机技术的其他几个研究领域发挥着重要作用：自旋量子比特(牛津)、半导体量子点(谢菲尔德)、囚禁离子(牛津、ICL、苏塞克斯、NPL)、囚禁原子(斯特拉斯克莱德、牛津)，以及基于光子的量子理论的发展(东芝-剑桥、布里斯托尔、谢菲尔德、牛津)，然而，“……英国在超导量子比特方面还没有做太多工作……”这些固态量子比特首先由Nakamura、Pashkin和Tsai在NEC进行实验实现，我们的目标是通过将Y.Pashkin搬迁到兰开斯特，创建新的卓越中心，它将广泛地解决基于超导体的Qt的开发和应用，成功地与现有的知名Qt小组竞争，如美国耶鲁大学、法国CEA Saclay、荷兰TUDelft和美国UCSB的Q-Station。新的基于超导体的量子力学(SQT)实验研究的卓越中心将研究一系列基于超导体的纳米结构的基本性质，旨在开发它们在量子计量学、纳米机电和传感应用方面的应用，并-从长远来看-量子信息处理。

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.