DOE Selects Berkeley Lab to Build Distributed Quantum Network

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has received a $12.5 million contract from the Department of Energy to develop a distributed quantum network with the aim of accelerating the development of a nationwide quantum internet.

Under the five-year DOE contract, the Berkeley Lab is expected to produce a testbed that will connect quantum computers between the national laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley.

The California Institute of Technology will support the effort, which involves the integration of a distributed quantum computing application, FedScoop reported.

The Berkeley-based project is dubbed the Quantum Application Network Testbed for Novel Entanglement Technology.

According to the laboratory, the three-node testbed will have an “entanglement swapping substrate over optical fiber” that will be managed by a quantum network protocol stack.

The collaboration of the three organizations will also demonstrate entanglement between small-scale quantum computers and two testbed locations.

In a statement, UC Berkeley Associate Professor Hartmut Haffner said that the demonstrations will need “seamless integration of a host of different technologies,” including quantum information processing with trapped ions and superconducting systems.

Haffner explained that the team expects the project to pave the way for a quantum internet in support of quantum communication applications that will connect various computers to create “larger and more powerful” ones.

Meanwhile, Caltech will not be connected to the resulting network despite its support because of an issue in proximity. Connecting to the network requires the sending of photons over long distances using a quantum repeater, a technology that has yet to be developed.

Berkeley Lab’s contract is part of a series of funding awards announced on Aug. 19. The DOE awarded a total of $61 million in funding for several quantum information system projects, including a quantum network testbed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.