The Integrated Quantum Networks (IQN) Research Hub

The Hub focuses on distributing quantum entanglement across all distances, enhancing quantum communications, distributed quantum computing, and quantum sensing. By providing technologies and techniques to our industrial innovation partners, the IQN Hub enables UK academia, national laboratories, industry, and end-users to lead the quantum networking revolution.

Quantum networks transmit and share quantum information by exploiting entanglement and quantum measurement, achieving tasks that classical systems cannot. The IQN Hub addresses major challenges that hinder the full realization of the quantum internet—a global network that connects remote quantum devices via quantum and classical links—thereby creating fundamentally new communications and computing capabilities. Key research challenges include developing matter qubits with adequate storage time, coherent processing, and error correction; implementing large-scale entanglement networks with agile routing; and connecting quantum processors over long distances, ensuring cost-effective scalability, standardization, and certification.

The IQN Hub draws on photonic entanglement expertise from the EPSRC Quantum Communications Hub and advanced quantum memory and matter qubit research from the QCS Hub to address critical challenges in quantum networking. We are developing key technologies crucial for the national supply chain and advancing global quantum key distribution and intercontinental entanglement. Collaborations with international missions support our progress. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), along with academic and security partners like the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), ensures our projects align with evolving quantum regulatory standards and enhance national security. Despite global competition, we actively promote cooperation with international peers, enriching our robust industrial partnerships and establishing the IQN Hub as a globally recognized leader in quantum networking.