Michael Baczyk, director of investment advisory for Global Quantum Intelligence, will cover the latest trends in quantum technology investments—which will analyze investors involved, size of funding, and their geographic location. He’ll describe what he’s seeing in terms of quantum technologies gaining traction, as well as explore quantum ecosystem needs to sustain growth and innovation.

Two groups at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany, led by Professor Maria Chekhova and Francesco Tani, recently worked with researchers from Canada and Israel to explore the generation of high harmonics (nonlinear process in which intense ultrashort pulses of light drive electrons to emit high harmonics of the driving field frequency) using different kinds of light via noncoherent photon statistics.

The team demonstrated that it’s possible to go beyond standard nonlinear optics of light-matter interaction by using quantum light—and it’s more efficient.

In this piece, Sally Cole Johnson talks to Tani about their work and how they figured out a way to fully exploit the quantum aspects of a bright squeezed vacuum, which as you might guess isn’t at all straightforward because it’s susceptible to any imperfections of the optical mirrors, lenses, and even dust.

Professor Gao Weibo’s team at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore made a discovery that could make quantum computing more compact—potentially shrinking essential components 1,000x.

A class of quantum computers being developed now relies upon photons created in pairs that are entangled. One way to produce these photons is to shine a laser on millimeter-thick crystals and use optical equipment to ensure the photons become linked. A drawback is that it’s too big to integrate into a computer chip. But the scientists found a way to produce linked pairs of photons using much thinner materials that are mere micrometers thick—and without additional optical gear to maintain the link between the photon pairs, which makes the overall setups simpler as well as opening the door to potentially scaling down the size of devices for quantum applications.

Professor Giulia Galli’s group at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering writes about their new proposed type of memory: optical data is transferred via a rare Earth element embedded within a solid material to a nearby quantum defect.

The group worked out the physics behind how the transfer of energy between defects may underlie an incredibly efficient optical storage method.

In this piece, we chat with researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China about their work on wind-sensing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) theory based on upconversion quantum interference and a prototype. Its main goal is to “see further and finer details, and measure faster and more accurately.”

The team is using Hong-Ou-Mandel interference (a.k.a. two-photon interference) and high-order quantum erasure (eliminate or restore quantum entanglement two photons by manipulating additional photons) to demonstrate quantum interference phenomena with independent photons from different light sources.

Quantum LiDAR shows potential for future applications in continuous remote sensing of ultrahigh-speed moving targets.