NQVL:QSTD:Pilot: Quantum sensing and imaging lab (Q-SAIL)

Quantum sensing presents a unique opportunity for early adoption of technology with a true quantum advantage in the market. The Quantum Sensing and Imaging Lab (Q-SAIL) develops high-performance quantum sensors for a variety of applications ranging from frequency metrology and fundamental physics to terahertz (THz) and hyperspectral imaging, based on two-dimensional arrays of trapped ions. Optical atomic clocks based on single trapped ions, for example, are the most accurate sensors of any type, with systematic uncertainties below one part in 10^{18}. This performance has the potential to revolutionize existing frequency metrology applications such as telecommunications and navigation, as well as enable new capabilities such as relativistic geodesy and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. Q-SAIL’s sensors leverage entangled ion arrays to improve the bandwidth of optical frequency metrology by an order of magnitude or more beyond what is possible with classical sensors. THz imaging has applications in medicine and astronomy, but current sensors suffer from low quantum efficiency. Q-SAIL THz imaging sensors use molecular ions as pixels to achieve high quantum efficiency, and implement quantum compressed sensing algorithms with entangled arrays of molecules for highly sensitive spatial or spectral pattern recognition. Q-SAIL’s central quantum science technology demonstration (QSTD) is a 128-zone microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap array with integrated passive and active photonics for laser generation, control, and delivery. At each ion trap zone, a single logic ion qubit is trapped together with one or more sensor ion(s), which is a different atomic or molecular ion species for each sensing application, using quantum-logic spectroscopy (QLS). The sensor ions in different trap zones are entangled with each other via quantum gates with and between the logic ions, and can serve as individual pixels for imaging applications or combined using multi-ensemble clock protocols, quantum compressed sensing, quantum variational optimization, or quantum machine learning for precision sensing of scalar signals. The Q-SAIL user community is invited to contribute hardware modules, propose new sensing modalities, test new sensing algorithms, and use this flexible quantum platform to explore their own applications of interest. Additionally, quantum information science and technology (QIST) workforce education in general, and improving access and retention for underrepresented minority (URM) and female or non-binary students in particular, is a primary thrust of Q-SAIL. This project advances the objectives of Quantum Information Science and Engineering at NSF in response to the National Quantum Initiative Act for the continued leadership of the United States in QIS and its technology applications. 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.