Quantum sensors for the future

Future cluster 'QSens' from the universities of Stuttgart and Ulm in the final of the BMBF competition Clusters4Future [ Picture: University of Stuttgart / Ingmar Jakobi] "Clusters4future" is a new competition held as part of the German government's High-Tech Strategy 2025, which was established to speed up the pipeline between excellent research and innovations. The cluster sketch "Quantum sensors for the future (Qsens)", which is a joint project between the universities of Stuttgart and Ulm, the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart (IMS CHIPS) as well as different partners from industry, is now among the 16 finalists after the first round of the competition who have now been invited to submit a full proposal. The proposal is aimed in particular at the use of quantum sensor technology in the areas of personalized medicine, mobility, renewable energy and space technology. Quantum technology is a new field of research, which combines the physical foundations of quantum physics with practical aspects of engineering. Here, quantum effects such as entangling two photons or the energy states of an atom are used for applications in the fields of quantum communication, quantum sensor technology, quantum simulation and quantum computing. Quantum sensor technology in particular has a lot of potential for producing the first industry-relevant applications in the foreseeable future and of covering the growing need for high-precision sensor technology, both in industry as well as the consumer sector.