American company ColdQuanta that NASA provided it with $1 million in Civilian Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program (CCRPP) funding. This is a pilot program for the creation of commercial quantum atomic systems for civil purposes. ColdQuanta self-finances multiple projects in its operations, but this actual NASA award money highlights ColdQuanta's role in a relatively new field dominated by the so-called .
Cold atoms are called for the reason that they are cooled by lasers and turn into a kind of crystalline structure of a solid substance, where the role of the crystalline structure is played by standing light waves. In an optical lattice, cooled atoms are located at the wave maximum, like electrons in a crystal lattice of solids. This opens the way to a controlled and measurable transition of atoms and, in practice, to controlled quantum effects. Based on quantum atomic systems, it will be possible to create high-precision instruments for measuring time, and this is high-precision navigation without geopositioning systems, quantum communications, radio frequency sensing, quantum computing, quantum modeling, and much more.
ColdQuanta has come a long way in the development of quantum atomic systems based on cold atoms. For example, created together with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the ColdQuanta facility today flies around the Earth on the International Space Station. But modern ColdQuanta plants are large - at least 400 liters in volume. The company's internal developments and NASA funding promise to help create 40-liter ultra-strong quantum atomic systems that will find application both in civil ground transport and as airborne and space platforms.
Source: 3dnews.ru