"Quantum Computing Enhanced Sensing" (Prof. Soonwoi Choi)

Date: May 26, 2026
Time: 02:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Prof. Soonwoi Choi
MIT, Cambridge, USA
Location: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Hans-Kopferman-Straße 1, 85748 Garching
Room: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
Host: MPQ

Quantum information technology is advancing at an astonishing pace. What should we do with it? In this colloquium, I will argue that one of the most powerful and near-term applications of quantum computers lies in quantum sensing. We will show how a digital quantum computer can be used to improve a foundational sensing task: the detection of weak oscillating fields with unknown amplitude and frequency. This task underlies a wide range of real-world applications, from NMR and atomic clocks to gravitational-wave detection and dark-matter searches.

By integrating quantum computation with sensing, we develop quantum computing–enhanced sensing protocols that achieve the ultimate performance bound—the Grover–Heisenberg limit. The central idea is to digitize a continuous, analog signal into a discrete quantum operation that can be coherently processed within a quantum algorithm, enabling nonlinear signal processing beyond what is possible with conventional strategies. We will discuss what makes this approach qualitatively distinct from traditional entanglement-enhanced quantum sensing, and propose proof-of-principle implementations based on solid-state spins. Together, these results establish quantum computation as a new and practical resource for pushing the fundamental limits of sensing.