Ideas Lab named Industry Partner for SAVaNT program

“SAVaNT teams aim to enable new, room-temperature sensing capabilities and quantum technologies.

DARPA has announced its selection of eight industry and university research teams to support the Science of Atomic Vapors for New Technologies (SAVaNT) program, including Quantum Valley Ideas Lab.

Quantum research in both information science and sensing shows great promise for enabling a host of new defense applications. A major hindrance to transitioning breakthroughs from the laboratory to practical use, however, is the extensive equipment needed to cool and trap atoms to exploit their quantum features. The selected SAVaNT research teams will focus on warm atomic vapors as opposed to cold-atom technology. This approach does not require complex laser-cooling and allows for a larger number of atoms, boosting the signal. The challenge, however, is that thermal environment effects – even at room temperature – significantly mitigate how long the quantum coherence can last.”