QuSIT is focused on deploying quantum solutions into real-world challenges, including transport, healthcare, utilities, and critical national infrastructure.
The UK Quantum Technology Research Hub in Sensing, Imaging and Timing (QuSIT), part of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme, launched in December 2024, brings together an interdisciplinary team of physicists, engineers and data scientists. Led by the University of Birmingham, with a consortium including the Universities of Glasgow, Bristol, Durham, Heriot-Watt, Imperial, Nottingham, Southampton and Strathclyde, and the British Geological Survey and the National Physical Laboratory, the hub aims to accelerate quantum sensing development working together with a range of industry partners.
Quantum technologies have enormous potential to impact everyday lives, and researchers are now finding significant practical use cases in quantum sensing, imaging and timing. The QuSIT Hub is addressing key research barriers to enable the scale-up of these technologies to allow them to be used more widely in support of economic growth and societal benefits.
We often think of an object as existing in one place or another, or two separated objects being independent of each other. This may be true in what we might call a classical system. The same no longer necessarily holds in a quantum system. Quantum sensing and imaging rely on features of quantum mechanics such as the superposition principle and entanglement – allowing an object to have a probability to be in two different states, or causing their properties to be inherently linked. In the QuSIT hub, researchers are using these features with atoms and phonons (particles of light) to create transducers that enable us to look at the world around us in new ways, providing practical tools to look under the ground, through surfaces, to see small objects in the sky, to support brain health and detect serious diseases.
An example of quantum sensing revolutionising the way we are able to see the world around us, is quantum sensing of gravity gradients. An estimated 4 million road excavations are carried out per year in the UK for utilities maintenance and repairs, which constitute a major source of disruption and delay to surface transport. Quantum sensing of gravity has shown huge potential in significantly enhancing our ability to look beneath the surface of the Earth and could help to better target interventions – reducing delays and congestion due to roadworks.
“When we move one of our sensors across a surface, if there is a varying density distribution under the ground, the force that the atoms feel changes over space. We can measure that force, and use it to find underground objects such as pipes and tunnels, or to look for potential hazards such as sinkholes before they open.” says Michael Holynski, Professor of Quantum Sensing at the University of Birmingham and Principal Investigator for QuSIT. “The advantage our gravity gradient sensors offer is they measure with unsurpassed common-mode rejection of noise – almost operating as a ‘noise-cancelling headphone’ for gravity. They reject vibration, the key barrier for rapidly obtaining useful information.” This offers the potential for high resolution gravity information at a practical cost, which would have profound implications for essential industries like construction and infrastructure, and areas such as archaeology and water resources.
“The underground contains our utilities and hidden infrastructure, things we don’t think about in our everyday lives,” said Holynski. “Government evidence suggests that challenges with the underground space are responsible for 20-60% of delays in building new transport infrastructure.”
In 2022, researchers at the University of Birmingham reported that a quantum sensor for gravity gradiometry had been taken outside of laboratory conditions and successfully used to find a tunnel buried outdoors below the ground, marking a world-first achievement.
Government evidence suggests that challenges with the underground space are responsible for 20-60% of delays in building new transport infrastructure.
This created international interest and led to the formation of a start-up, Delta.g, founded by Holynski and two colleagues, to pursue commercialisation. “We are working with partners like the Department for Transport, who are interested in improving the inspection of transport infrastructure, making it quicker to find problems or hazards and intervene, and avoiding having holes in the wrong place.”
Other customers include a civil engineering company keen to use the device to inspect and make brownfield sites easier to reuse, and a telecommunications firm that wants to use the gradiometer to find ducts for placing its broadband and utilities infrastructure.
Researchers are also collaborating with The Royal Navy to use gravity gradient maps to navigate in GNSS-denied conditions. Gravity changes from place to place based on small changes in subsurface density; higher gravity occurs over denser regions. A gravity gradient map is created by making several measurements over an area of interest, either with gravity itself or bathymetric scans. “We are dependent on GNSS, but it can be spoofed or jammed, and is not available in all environments”, explained Holynski. “Maps of the local gravity gradient can be used to support the rest of a navigation system in such conditions.” This will be particularly useful for autonomous underwater vehicles that are usually cut off from satellite signals, and future autonomous shipping.
Precision timing is another quantum technology, and key research area for QuSIT researchers. Optical clocks rely on the long-lived states within certain atomic species. These clocks are already used to provide exceptionally precise measurement of time – being accurate to better than one second within the age of the universe.
“Precision timing underpins a huge range of applications in our everyday lives, and is relevant across our critical national infrastructure.”, said Holynski. The team is working with the National Physical Laboratory to understand the challenges of networked timing – timing distributed across fibre so that precise time can be shared across the UK.
Research across the Hub is also investigating how precision timing or quantum clocks can improve classical radar. “We are focused on bringing precision timing to a wider range of applications including in complex systems. One key example is enhancing classical radar systems. A radar system works by sending out a wave, which is scattered by objects along its path. By looking at the phase of the returned signal, we can obtain information about those objects. If we can enhance the local oscillator of the radar system using ultra-stable quantum oscillators, we can, in principle, detect smaller features in an environment and improve synchronisation between discrete nodes of a multi-static radar system to improve spatial diversity,” explained Holynski.
With noise reduced, smaller features in the sky are easier to detect, such as locating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in real-time. “We aim to get to the level of resolution to see a bird inside a flock of birds, and that might provide new information for environmental scientists. We see a lot of interest for use in civil aviation, monitoring of cities, protection of cities, and space-based applications”, he added.
Quantum sensing could also improve healthcare imaging. One example is QuSIT researchers at the University of Nottingham who have created wearable brain imaging devices in the form of sensors built into helmets. They use magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measures the magnetic fields produced by the brain’s electrical currents, but in an improved hardware format than the standard of care.
“Incumbent technologies require patients to be still during a scan. With helmets, we have a wearable system that is changing the game in terms of how one can look at the brain and brain health. Now hub researchers can image the brain of children and those who can’t sit still”, said Holynski. “It’s providing new tools for imaging people in more natural conditions.”
QuSIT researchers have already displayed compelling proof that the quantum community can help provide solutions for real world challenges in construction, navigation, national security and health. The next steps for the new Hub are aimed at maximising the economic and social value of quantum breakthroughs through close collaboration key stakeholders such as end-user and supply chain industry partner, government and policy-makers and through working with partners in the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme.
Professor of Quantum Sensing
Staff profile for Professor Michael Holynski, Professor of Quantum Sensing at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham.
