Quantum Technology Centre, University of Southampton

Quantum Technology Centre

Quantum Technologies: From Foundations to Applications

The core of the Quantum Technology Centre is based at the Physics and Mathamatics departments at Southampton and will set new impulses for research and teaching ranging from fundamental quantum physics to novel quantum technologies. 

Quantum Science and Technology exploit the quantum-mechanical phenomena of coherence, superposition, and entanglement, and the particular properties of quantum-mechanical measurement, to provide new techniques for sensing, measurement, information processing, data transmission and storage. While these phenomena have no classical counterparts, new methods based upon are possibly enhancing classical processes and metrology beyond their conventional limits. Quantum technologies are already providing miniature chip-scale atomic clocks for navigation and timing; future devices will include high-sensitivity accelerometers, gravimeters and magnetometers for navigation and geological exploration, micromechanical mass and pressure sensors with single-molecule discrimination, single-electron transistors, quantum-engineered solar cells, and entanglement-based quantum information processing. 

Across the University, Southampton researchers are tackling quantum technologies from many directions. As our engineers relentlessly follow Moore's Law towards ever smaller devices, our physicists are steadily expanding the realm of quantum coherence, while our theoreticians are devising and analysing schemes and protocols for their exploitation. The next generation of nanosensors and integrated devices will be both governed and enhanced by quantum mechanical phenomena. With the new nanofabrication cleanrooms of our Zepler Institute, Southampton is at a good position at the forefront of these exciting new technologies.

The detailed understanding of decoherence mechanisms and their relevance for quantum systems at different length, time and mass scales is a necessity to enable future quantum technologies as well as a challenge for quantum theory to explain Nature on the most basic level. We therefore dedicate a part of our research to study the manifold decohering processes.