US Quantum Information Science Ecosystem.
Charles Tahan, Assistant Director for Quantum Information Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)—as well as the director of the National Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO)—featured Q-SEnSE in the Dec. 3 edition of Letters from the NQCO Director, highlighting CU Boulder's leadership in quantum sensing and the many "quantum questions" the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute aims to address.
"The Q-SENSE team will tackle a deeply scientific question at the heart of quantum information," Tahan writes. "Does quantum entanglement, not just superposition, provide an advantage for quantum timekeeping, sensing or measurement? Let me give you a sense of how far they will reach to answer these questions. Some of the best clocks, like those made by NIST at their joint lab (JILA) with the University of Colorado Boulder, reach accuracies of a small fraction of 1018. That means that over the age of the Universe, they may be wrong by one second. Q-SEnSE may make 1020 clocks possible." Such clocks, Tahan explains, can potentially predict future earthquakes and enable fundamental discoveries about nature.
— Written by Allison Miller
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.