Center: NSF Engineering Research Center for Quantum Networks

Nontechnical: The Engineering Research Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) is laying the technical and societal foundations for the quantum internet—an infrastructure that will connect quantum sensors, processors, computers, transmitters, receivers, cameras, and other quantum-enabled devices across short, metropolitan, and long-distance networks. The central resource that makes such networks possible is quantum entanglement: a form of correlation among quantum systems that is stronger than any allowed by classical physics. By distributing and using entanglement across networked devices, the quantum internet can enable new capabilities beyond today’s internet, including physics-based communications security, privacy-preserving access to cloud quantum computers, distributed quantum computing, and networks of sensors with sensitivity and coordination beyond classical limits. Technical: As with the early ARPANET, whose architects could not have anticipated the full reach of the modern internet, the long-term impact of the quantum internet may be broad and transformative. It has the potential to advance national security, data privacy, drug discovery, materials design, precision measurement, and fundamental science, including ultra-sensitive telescope arrays linked by entanglement. CQN is also committed to ensuring that this emerging infrastructure develops in ways that are broadly accessible, affordable, secure, and socially responsible. The Center studies the social, legal, economic, and policy implications of quantum-network technologies, while bringing basic quantum-technology literacy to diverse communities. At the university level, CQN is helping define and grow Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) as a new interdisciplinary discipline, with curricular innovations that prepare a diverse workforce of quantum engineers able to imagine, build, and responsibly deploy future quantum-network applications. CQN’s technical goal is to develop one of the world’s first long-distance quantum communication networks enabled by fault-tolerant quantum repeaters and quantum switches. Quantum repeaters are special-purpose quantum processors that can overcome the distance limits of direct optical transmission by storing, processing, and distributing qubits—quantum bits that can exist in superpositions of 0 and 1. CQN is developing repeaters and their key components, including quantum memories based on diamond vacancy centers and trapped ions, high-efficiency qubit–photon interfaces, high-speed photonic entanglement sources, and the protocols needed to connect these systems through existing telecommunications infrastructure. These technologies will be validated and integrated in testbeds in Maryland and Boston, leading to milestone demonstrations of quantum-networking capabilities. The Center brings together computer scientists, electrical engineers, optical engineers, networking researchers, atomic physicists, materials scientists, economists, and social scientists to design quantum-network architectures that can interoperate with the classical internet. Its engineering research is coordinated with studies of security and privacy law, distributed secure computation, potential bias in quantum-network-enabled applications, and the societal implications of open access to cloud quantum computing. Led by the University of Maryland, CQN includes core partner institutions Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Arizona, together with member institutions the University of Oregon, Northern Arizona University, the University of Chicago, and Brigham Young University. The Center is supported by an industry advisory board spanning defense, telecommunications, quantum-networking startups, and related sectors, as well as an international advisory board of leading experts in quantum internet technology. 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.