quantum sensing

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS

Trapped Rydberg ions are a novel quantum system. By laser light, the outermost electron of trapped ions is excited to high-lying orbitals. Such Rydberg ions are million times bigger than ions in the ground state, and due to their size, they obtain very peculiar properties. For instance, they have very large transition dipole moments thus become very sensitive to microwave fields.

In conjunction with Leonardo MW Ltd, the Department of Computer Science is offering a fully funded PhD studentship at the University of York. Quantum detection is an emerging field which has been applied in the optical domains and is now being scaled to microwave frequencies to make “quantum radar”. A theoretical exploration of the subject is needed to determine the potential improvements in detection performance (e.g. range and robustness against noise) which quantum technology offers when compared to current “classical” detection methods.