Impact Case Study III

Summary:

Research Period: 2000 – 2016

When did the impact occurred: 1 August 2013- 31 December 2020

• Societal issue addressed: Quantum information technologies including experimental realisations of quantum information processing
• Who & How: Professor Sir Peter Knight and his research group have been at the forefront of fundamental quantum optics for over forty years.  In particular, his research focussed on generating and manipulating coherence and entanglement within dissipative environments and introduced methods and approaches widely adopted throughout the world. Knight and colleagues were able to demonstrate that arrays of qubits in optical lattices had great potential for the realization of an atom register, modelling quantum computation based on an optical lattice with one atom per lattice and coherent manipulation between two different atomic ground states. Knight showed it was possible to perform one-qubit gates and two-qubit gates by Raman and tunnelling transitions respectively. Knight also investigated the limitations of atom traps - microstructured surfaces which can be tailored to provide trapping geometries for the manipulation of the quantum state of cold atoms.
• Application: His highly cited papers pioneered new directions that underpin the current priorities of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP).
• Results: Since 2000, Knight has been advising Government on quantum technologies from his appointments at NPL, the MoD and Imperial. He was pivotal in establishing the UK’s 10-year £1Bn National Quantum Technologies Programme, of which the first phase (2014-2019) established four Quantum Technology Hubs, involving more than 20 universities and to date approximately 100 companies, with a Government investment of £380M. Following the publication of the Blackett Review “The Quantum Age” led by Knight in 2016, and the success of phase 1, a second phase commenced in 2019, extending the total Quantum Technologies funding beyond £1Bn.