June 21, 2022 — Amazon Web Services today announced the AWS Center for Quantum Networking (CQN), whose mission is to address scientific and engineering challenges and to develop new hardware, software, and applications for quantum networks. AWS said CQN will complement the quantum science and engineering efforts underway at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing and the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab.
“While quantum computing continues to be a major area of investment and progress for academic and industry researchers alike, it is only one component of a broader class of quantum technologies,” wrote AWS quantum research scientists Denis Sukachev and Mihir Bhaskar in a blog announcing the center. “To unlock the full potential of quantum devices, they need to be connected together into a quantum network, similar to the way today’s devices are connected via the internet. Despite not receiving the same level of attention as quantum computers, quantum networks have fascinating possible applications. One of them is enabling global communications protected by quantum key distribution with privacy and security levels not achievable using conventional encryption techniques. Quantum networks will also provide powerful and secure cloud quantum servers by connecting together and amplifying the capabilities of individual quantum processors.”
They said quantum networks will leverage some technologies already deployed for modern optical communications, such as lasers, fibers, and detectors. However, instead of strong laser beams, quantum networks require single photons — smallest building blocks of light — to connect quantum devices together. Single photons enable many of the special capabilities of quantum networks and simultaneously pose the great challenge: quantum mechanics prohibits their amplification limiting the network range. Also, the weakness of single photons complicates interfacing them with today’s quantum computing devices. This means that special new technologies, such as quantum repeaters and transducers, will need to be developed in order to implement global quantum networks.
source: AWS
