Cabinet clears Rs 6,000-crore National Quantum Mission: All you need to know

Jitendra Singh

The Union Cabinet has approved the National Quantum Mission (NQM) at a cost of Rs 6,003.65 crore.

The mission indicates that India’s foray into the research and development of quantum technology  will have defined milestones that are expected to be achieved over the course of next eight years - from 2023-24 to 2030-31.

What is quantum technology?

Quantum technology is a field of physics and engineering that studies and applies the principles of quantum mechanics to the development of new technologies. Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that describes the behaviour of matter and energy at a microscopic scale, where the classical laws of physics do not apply.

The principle is used in semiconductors, lasers, Blu-ray, transistors, mobile phones, USB drives, MRI, electron microscopes, and even the basic light switch.

While the classical computer is transistor-based, quantum computers are going to work on atoms. Quantum computers use quantum bits (qubits), instead of classical bits to perform calculations. The advantage of quantum computing is that it can solve problems much faster with more authenticity.

What is the National Quantum Mission?

India’s quantum mission has been in the works since 2018, when the Department of Science and Technology put out a call for proposals on projects related to the field of quantum computing. QuEST (Quantum-Enabled Science and Technology) falls under the department’s Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) division.

In January 2019, the first mission meeting of the QuEST programme was held at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Hyderabad. The event was attended by nearly 50 delegates, most of them academics working in the area of quantum physics.

Top science representatives of the government’s different research branches, including principal scientific adviser (PSA) to the government K VijayRaghavan, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan, and NITI Aayog member and former defence secretary Vijay Kumar Saraswat, were also present.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2020 Budget speech had said that India was set to invest Rs 8,000 crore over the next five years in the National Mission on Quantum Technology or the QuEST programme.

What is the significance of the mission?

According to Singh, the National Quantum Mission can take the technology development ecosystem in the country to a globally competitive level.

The mission aims to make India a leading nation in the quantum technology sector and promote economic growth. "The decision is going to give India a quantum jump in the field," Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said.

India is going to be at par with six global countries researching quantum technology. Most countries are in the research and development phase. The US, China, France, Austria, and Finland are in the research and development stage and are yet to venture into the application stage of the technology, and India will be the latest entrant into the club.

What does the mission aim to do?

The new mission targets developing intermediate scale quantum computers with 50-1,000 physical qubits in eight years across various platforms like superconducting and photonic technology. In classical computing, the smallest and most basic unit of information that can be processed and stored is called a 'bit'. In quantum computing, the basic unit of information is called a 'qubit'.

"We will try to achieve 20 to 50 qubits in the first three years, 50-100 in the first five years. By the end of this mission, our target is to develop a1,000-qubit computer," science minister Singh said.

Though many companies have developed and are working on quantum computers, they are in early stages of development, as qubits are extremely delicate and prone to errors, and increasing the number of qubits, while maintaining their stability is a major challenge in the development of quantum computers.

How will the mission benefit India?

The mission will help develop magnetometers with high sensitivity in atomic systems and atomic clocks for precision timing, communications and navigation. It will also support the design and synthesis of quantum materials such as superconductors, novel semiconductor structures and topological materials for the fabrication of quantum devices. Single photon sources or detectors and entangled photon sources will also be developed for quantum communications, sensing and metrological applications.

The mission would greatly benefit communication, health, financial and energy sectors as well as drug design, and space applications. It will provide a huge boost to national priorities like Digital India, Make in India, Skill India and Stand-up India, Start-up India, Self-reliant India and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Singh said.