Continuously Monitored Quantum Sensors: Smart Tools and Applications

Research Project, 2020 – 2022

Acquiring and interpreting data about physical processes is vital for science and technology. C’MON-QSENS!’s targeted breakthrough is to develop tools to interpret data acquired from quantum sensors. Indeed, quantum-enhanced ultra-precise sensors are among the most disruptive quantum technologies with near-term applications in several disciplines, but with a limited reach so far. Most efforts are devoted to the measurement of static properties by single-shot or repeated measurement schemes, while many real-world applications are concerned with dynamical signals. Extracting information from time-series of data needs sensors operating in the continuously monitored regime, and here is where the interdisciplinary approach of C’MON-QSENS! emerges. We aim to develop continuously monitored hot atomic ensembles and optomechanical devices, and we pursue their application in a collaboration with leading experimentalists and theory researchers in quantum information theory, statistical inference and classical signal processing. Our results will allow advanced sensing tasks to be explicitly demonstrated in experiments. We will both gain a deeper understanding of quantum information processing in the real-time regime and develop practical approaches to quantum sensing and interpretation of real-time signals.