Quantum science

Quantum science, alternatively called quantum science and technology, is a recent name for the field of science that involves the set of quantum mechanical properties applied to various scientific disciplines. Various applications of quantum science together form the young domain of quantum technologies.

History

The National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology of Japan was created in 2016 The United Nations have declared 2025 to be the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Subfields

Currently the field of quantum science comprises the following disciplines:

Quantum physics

Quantum physics, the parent scientific field, originated in the 1930s. It was established by early pioneers like Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, who laid out the foundational principles. From the 1940s onwards, quantum mechanics started to flourish thanks to a series of international seminars and symposia, such as the first Shelter Island Conference in 1947, the Pocono Conference of 1948, the Oldstone Conference of 1949, followed by the Shelter Island Conference in Valence Theory of 1951, the Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in 1962 and the Annual Quantum Foundations Conference at Linnaeus University.

Quantum chemistry

In the 1980s, scientists like Walter Kohn and John Pople extended quantum principles to chemistry, earning recognition for their efforts. In 1998 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contribution to the development of computational methods in quantum chemistry.

Quantum information science

Quantum information science began to emerge in the 1980s and 90s, thanks to the discovery of the qubit. Combining quantum mechanics with information theory, it has implications for computation, cryptography and communication. Richard Feynman, David Deutsch and Paul Benioff laid out the main idea of a quantum computer in the 1970s and 80s. Peter Shor and Lov Grover began developing quantum algorithms in the 1990s. Quantum cryptography came up in the 1990s when Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard developed the first quantum key distribution protocol (BB84). From the 2000s onwards, quantum computation became a major branch of IT development.

Quantum biology

In the 1990s, the Swedish physicist Per-Olov Löwdin introduced quantum mechanics into biological contexts, setting the stage for quantum biology. More recently, the British science writer Philip Ball has brought newly acquired insights of quantum biology to a wider public.

Quantum technology

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the first examples of quantum physics applied to the field of healthcare.

Quantum nanoscience

In the 2000s, researchers like Don Eigler and Michael Crommie explored quantum effects at the nanoscale, leading to the field of quantum nanoscience, which explores aspects at the very smallest scale of nanoscience. Quantum nanoscience led to the development of the scanning tunneling microscope and it enables refinement of, amongst others, electron microscopy.

Bibliography

• Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1932), by John von Neumann
• Quantum Science - The Frontier of Physics and Chemistry (2022), editor Taku Onishi et al.
• Quantum Frontiers, a peer-reviewed quantum science journal published by Springer.
• Quantum Science and Technology, a quarterly journal published by IOPscience since 2016.