Speaker's Brief Introduction：Davide Bacco is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Florence and co-founder of QTI s.r.l., the first Italian startup developing and commercializing quantum communication systems. He received his degree in Engineering Telecommunication in 2011 at the University of Padova, Italy. In 2015 he finished in the same University the Ph.D. degree on Science Technology and Spatial Measures (CISAS). He has been working at the Department of Electronics and Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) for more than 7 years. His research interests regard quantum communications, quantum cryptography and integrated photonics for quantum communications.
Abstract: Quantum Internet will allow unprecedented applications that will dramatically change our lives, spanning from quantum-secured communications to distributed quantum simulations, i.e., ultra-precise clock synchronization, quantum-secured identification, efficient distribution of data and energy, quantum sensors, and secure access to quantum devices in the cloud. The main technical limitations currently restricting the range of applicability of the quantum internet are the intrinsic rate-distance limit and the extremely difficult coexistence with the present classical telecommunication infrastructure. Present quantum communication systems mainly use a two-dimensional encoding scheme (qubit) as an information unit, which is very fragile and susceptible to external noise. In fact, due to decoherence processes, caused by the interaction with the external environment, the ability of the adopted qubits to remain in superposition and/or in an entangled state is severely jeopardized. On the contrary, by adopting multidimensional quantum states (qudit), which are by nature more robust to noise owing to their higher information efficiency, the potential to realize the quantum internet is within our grasp. The idea is to build and test the constituents for a Quantum Internet based on multidimensional quantum states, by combining new technological advances with unconventional quantum interference. We will present a novel scheme for the generation, transmission, and interference of qudits, which are fundamental actions for the realization and deployment of quantum networks. A key value of our project is constituted by photonic integrated circuits, which are explored for the generation of multidimensional quantum states (exploring nonlinear effects of integrated photonics) combined with multicore deployed fibers and pioneering design of efficient and scalable multidimensional quantum interference. Our results will advance current state-of-the-art both from a theoretical and experimental point of view, demonstrating a concrete advantage of multidimensional quantum states in specific scenarios.