Quantum sensing techniques in astro-particle searches

Tuesday 13 Oct 2026, 15:30 → 18:30 Europe/Zurich

Alberto Marino (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Yevgeny Stadnik (The University of Sydney), Andrew Geraci, Chelsea Bartram (SLAC), Dalziel Wilson, Swati Singh, William Terrano (Arizona State University)

This DRD5 WP5 online workshop will focus on experimental methods in astro-particle searches, including the application of quantum-sensing approaches and the use of networks and arrays of sensors.  We aim to encourage cross-disciplinary discussions and highlight novel opportunities in this multi-faceted and dynamic field.

THE MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE VIA ZOOM.

15:30 → 16:00 La Palma Quantum Interferometer: Single-Photon Correlations for Quantum Astronomy

The La Palma Quantum Interferometer (LPQI, https://lapalmaqi.es/) aims to achieve microarcsecond resolution in optical astronomy by correlating photons detected at separate telescopes. Its Pathfinder and a proposed entanglement-based extension will link the Nordic Optical Telescope and the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo across a 550 m baseline. A planned expansion involving additional optical telescopes would extend the baselines to up to 1.5 km. I will outline the project’s scientific goals and sensor challenges, as well as its potential as a testbed for quantum-sensor R&D across astronomy, particle physics, and quantum communications.

Speaker: Francisco Prada

16:00 → 16:30 The Hannover Very Long Baseline Atom Interferometer: fundamental physics cases

Almost one century past the first observation of electrons undergoing Bragg diffraction on an Ni target brought upon countless technological breakthroughs, rendering laser-cooled and even ultracold atoms a resource readily available today. We will report on atom interferometry as a platform for quantum inertial sensing with emphasis on precision measurements of acceleration and gravity and present the Very Long Baseline Atom Interferometry (VLBAI) facility. It enables ground-based atomic matter-wave interferometry on large scales in space and time with shot noise-limited instabilities better than $10^{-9}\,$m/s$^2$ at $1\,$s at the horizon. Operated with rubidium and ytterbium simultaneously, tests of the universality of free fall at a level of parts in $10^{13}$ and beyond are in reach. Finally, the large spatial extent of the interferometer allows one to probe the limits of coherence at macroscopic scales as well as the interplay of quantum mechanics and gravity and serves as a pathfinder towards large-scale facilities such as AICE @CERN [1].

[1] arXiv:2608.18743 [hep-ex]

Speaker: Dennis Schlippert

16:30 → 17:00 Entanglement assisted quantum interferometry: towards quantum computing-enhanced imaging

The sensitivity of non-local optical measurements at low light intensities, such as those involved in long-baseline telescope arrays, is limited by fundamental quantum noise and photon losses. Distributed quantum entanglement has been proposed as a route towards overcoming these limitations and accessing new regimes of non-local optical sensing. We demonstrate the use of entangled quantum memories in a quantum network of silicon–vacancy centres in diamond nanocavities to experimentally perform such non-local phase measurements. Specifically, we combine the generation of event-ready remote quantum entanglement, photon mode erasure that hides the ‘which-path’ information of temporally and spatially separated incoming optical modes and non-local, non-destructive photon heralding enabled by remote entanglement to perform a proof-of-concept entanglement-assisted differential phase measurement of weak incident light between two spatially separate stations. Our results open the door for a new class of quantum-enhanced optical imaging methods with potential applications ranging from long-baseline interferometry and astronomy to microscopy.

Speaker: Mikhail Lukin (Harvard University)

17:00 → 17:30 TBD

Speaker: Michael Raymer (University of Oregon)

17:30 → 18:00 Levitated sensors for gravitational wave and dark matter detection

Gravitational-wave astronomy has so far been confined to frequencies below ~10 kHz, the band accessible to laser interferometers like LIGO. Yet a range of well-motivated sources connected to dark matter are expected to radiate at much higher frequencies, where interferometer sensitivity degrades due to photon shot noise. These include mergers of sub-solar-mass primordial black holes, a dark matter candidate in their own right, and gravitationally bound clouds of axions or axion-like particles that form around spinning black holes through superradiance and annihilate into gravitational waves. The Levitated Sensor Detector (LSD) is a compact, resonant gravitational-wave detector designed to access this unexplored high-frequency band: an optically trapped dielectric particle, or stack of dielectric discs, acts as a force sensor whose sensitivity improves, rather than worsens, at high frequency, since it is limited by thermal rather than photon noise. In this talk, I will describe the operating principle of the LSD, its target frequency band (roughly 10–300 kHz) and the dark-matter-motivated sources it aims to probe, and the design of the current meter-scale prototype. I will close with the status of the prototype and the outlook for this technology as a new window onto high-frequency gravitational waves from dark matter.

Speaker: Nancy Aggarwal (UC Davis)

18:00 → 18:30 Discussions