Researchers are harnessing quantum behavior to create secure networks that will define the next communications era.
The Internet is built on classical physics. Signals travel as radio waves, microwaves, and fiber-optic pulses, carrying information from one point to another. With quantum networking, the next leap in how we communicate and secure information is making its way into the real world.
Next-level networking performance and security
Rather than transmitting information as classical waveforms, quantum networks operate at the level of quantum states, most commonly entangled photons. Today, researchers don’t just accept entanglement; they’re learning to harness it.
“It can be used to share quantum keys for cryptography,” says Cale Gentry, a principal research scientist in SRI’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “Increasingly, it may provide a kind of next-level performance that will be critical for many applications, including future quantum computing.”
“Early-stage research is how we identify new pathways that can make applied quantum networking a practical reality.” — Cale Gentry
SRI has been building toward this future since 2019, pursuing multiple methods for generating entangled photons, which are the foundational building blocks of many quantum networks. One research path explores meta-surface-like structures as a means of producing quantum entanglement. Another investigates frequency transduction: converting photonic qubits between frequencies while preserving quantum properties, thereby making them compatible with different computing and sensing architectures.
Getting to commercial quantum networking
First up is quantum key distribution (QKD), a method of encrypting communications that is impossible to intercept without detection. QKD is moving out of the lab and into early commercial deployment across telecom, banking, and defense.
Position verification has profound security implications for the future of networking. Entangled particles make it possible to confirm, with absolute certainty, that a signal originated from a specific location on Earth and to make that claim unforgeable. In a world of spoofed GPS signals and sophisticated deception, this is a critical piece.
Further out, but closer than most believe, is the quantum Internet itself: a global network linking quantum computers and quantum sensors in ways that exponentially amplify individual capabilities. SRI is developing quantum sensors for biomedical diagnostics and defense applications. Quantum networking would allow those sensors to work in concert, compounding their precision in ways classical networking cannot replicate.
“At least for now, collaborative quantum sensing is not going to be smaller or cheaper,” Gentry acknowledges. “In cases where precision pays for itself, it’s an exciting prospect.”
Global impact of quantum networking
Transformation never happens overnight. The researchers laying fiber-optic cable in the 1980s could not have imagined the Internet their work would enable. Today’s quantum networking researchers are in an analogous position, doing foundational work whose full implications will become visible over time.
“That’s why it’s important to be working on this now,” Gentry says. “Early-stage research is how we identify new pathways that can make applied quantum networking a practical reality.”
A quantum future is the accumulated result of deliberate, sustained investment in science. For 80 years, SRI has been making these kinds of investments.
Learn more about how SRI is advancing the future of quantum.
