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The Czech Republic will join efforts to build a European quantum computer based on photonics, set to be one of the most important technological advances of the future. The Czech Technical University in Prague, together with seventeen other university and corporate partners, was selected for the Epique project funded by the European Commission. The old continent wants to keep up with, among others, the USA and China, where they are also working on quantum photonic computers.
Quantum computers differ from ordinary computers in that they work not only with binary states (1 and 0), but with several states at the same time. This allows certain types of operations to be calculated incomparably faster. This can lead to major changes in encryption, for example. Current security algorithms could break very quickly. Hackers sometimes brag on dark web forums that they are storing stolen encrypted passwords to decrypt in the future using quantum machines.
Security forces, banks and operators are therefore interested in quantum computers and communications. The Czech Republic has already started preparing to build a quantum network, and at the end of the year Cetin also tested it between Libní and Michlí. At the same time, the National Office for Cyber Security prepared materials for the use of quantum-resistant algorithms. “Attack-capable quantum computers that overcome current encryption could be available within five to fifteen years,” the agency summarized.
According to information from e15, the European Commission will include quantum technologies in the EU’s new economic security strategy. Member States must keep an eye on who invests in such assets to avoid alienation by hostile powers and the like. The US already limits foreign investment in this area. For example, when the Czech fund Tensor Ventures invested in the American startup QC82, which developed a photonic quantum chip, it had to go through a state audit.
The Commission’s next step is to actively support research and development. It launched the Quantum Flagship program with a budget of one billion euros for several projects. One of them is the mentioned Epique, which has 10.3 million euros, about 256 million crowns. The project aims to create prototypes of quantum photonic computers capable of stringing together ten or more quantum bits (qubits), paving the way for a thousand or more qubits.
The most commonly developed supercomputers today work with so-called superconducting qubits. Thanks to the European Commission, the national supercomputer center IT4Innovations in Ostrava will also receive such a machine. However, superconducting qubits must be cooled to almost absolute zero, which requires complex installation. Photonic machines eliminate this disadvantage. On the other hand, it’s difficult to scale them, so to speak, which is what Epique aims to solve.
The Czech Republic’s participation will be academic in nature. “Our task will be to theoretically underpin, evaluate and interpret the building blocks. “Specifically, it is about the study of protocols, the preparation of entangled states of qubits, the possibility of computer quality test designs and the implementation of boson sampling,” explained Professor Igor Jex from the Nuclear Faculty of CTU, who leads the Czech section e15.
Epique also includes the French startup Quandela, which received 67.5 million euros to develop a photonic quantum computer. “The European project has the advantage that it is not limited to a startup, but can unite top university teams and production-capable companies,” described Michal Křelina, who, for example, solved quantum technologies for the European Space Agency EUSPA. “From the Czech perspective, it is one of the few opportunities to get involved in something like this.” “We probably wouldn’t be able to build our own quantum computer,” Křelina added.
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