NJIT Implementation of Recent Executive Orders
Quantum Characterization, Calibration, and Control (QC3)
Funding Agency:
- Department of Defense
DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory–Army Research Office (ARL-ARO) in partnership with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is soliciting proposals for research in Quantum Characterization, Calibration, and Control (QC3). This is a proposed four-year program and is primarily focused on three topic areas in the field of quantum computing (QC).
The topic areas are as follows:
(1) Characterization: • Primary Research Goal: Advance the state-of-the-art to quantitatively assess the performance of qubit operations in multi-qubit circuits and to extract error-models.
(2) Calibration: • Primary Research Goal: Advance state-of-the-art for bring up of multi-qubit circuits for high-performance operations near or better than fault-tolerance thresholds.
(3) Control: • Primary Research Goal: Advance state-of-the-art control techniques to operate multi-qubit circuits operating near or better than fault-tolerant thresholds, accounting for the specifics of error-models for the circuit.
For this BAA, by error-models is meant the quantitative (Topic 1) description of the total, the types, and distribution of errors encountered by qubit operations in multi-qubit circuits.
Research proposals to these topics are sought that address the circuit gate-based model of quantum computation overhead and inefficiencies, as well as improve the accuracy and stability of characterization, calibration, and control schemes, in a manner relevant for qubit arrays in the 10s-100s of qubits scale for early fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) applications.
Quantum computing hardware continues to make rapid progress, particularly in the quality and number of available qubits. Today, commercial systems regularly contain hundreds of qubits; moreover, several groups have demonstrated large arrays with two qubit fidelities of 99% or better [21, 22]. These advancements have enabled the implementation of deep circuits, and in particular quantum error correction (QEC) [23, 24], which is widely considered to be the key technique required to enable future fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) [12-13]. However, the increased size of these systems presents new challenges in efficiently characterizing performance, developing low error and robust control schemes adapted to system non-idealities, and fine-tuning system calibration for high performance that can be maintained over deep algorithm runtimes.
The research topic areas of this BAA aim to address some of the leading challenges discussed above and advance state-of-the-art in characterization, calibration, and control of FTQC circuits.
TBA
White Papers: 4:00 PM Eastern Time on: 30 May 2025
Proposals: 4:00 PM Eastern Time on: 7 August 2025
Technical Program Point of Contact (ARO):
Dr. T.R. Govindan
Army Research Laboratory - Army Research Office
Email Address: t.r.govindan.civ@army.mil