Quantum technologies in space.

Recently, the European Commission supported by many European countries has announced large investments towards the commercialization of quantum technology (QT) to address and mitigate some of the biggest challenges facing today's digital era - e.g. secure communication and computing power.

Cavity cooling of an optically levitated submicron particle.

The coupling of a levitated submicron particle and an optical cavity field promises access to a unique parameter regime both for macroscopic quantum experiments and for high-precision force sensing. We report a demonstration of such controlled interactions by cavity cooling the center-of-mass motion of an optically trapped submicron particle. This paves the way for a light-matter interface that can enable room-temperature quantum experiments with mesoscopic mechanical systems.

Dispersion-cancelled biological imaging with quantum-inspired interferometry.

Quantum information science promises transformative impact over a range of key technologies in computing, communication, and sensing. A prominent example uses entangled photons to overcome the resolution-degrading effects of dispersion in the medical-imaging technology, optical coherence tomography. The quantum solution introduces new challenges: inherently low signal and artifacts, additional unwanted signal features.

Large quantum superpositions and interference of massive nanometer-sized objects.

We propose a method to prepare and verify spatial quantum superpositions of a nanometer-sized object separated by distances of the order of its size. This method provides unprecedented bounds for objective collapse models of the wave function by merging techniques and insights from cavity quantum optomechanics and matter-wave interferometry. An analysis and simulation of the experiment is performed taking into account standard sources of decoherence.

Entanglement-enhanced classical communication over a noisy classical channel.

We present and experimentally demonstrate a communication protocol that employs shared entanglement to reduce errors when sending a bit over a particular noisy classical channel. Specifically, it is shown that given a single use of this channel, one can transmit a bit with higher success probability when the sender and receiver share entanglement compared to the best possible strategy when they do not. The experiment is realized using polarization-entangled photon pairs, whose quantum correlations play a critical role in both the encoding and decoding of the classical message.