Apr 18 2025
In this interview, AZoQuantum speaks to Dr Carrie Weidner, Senior Lecturer in Quantum Engineering at the University of Bristol and Co-Investigator of the QEPNT Hub about how quantum technology is set to revolutionize navigation by moving away from GPS.
Can you introduce the Quantum-Enabled Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (QEPNT) hub and its mission within the UK’s National Quantum Technologies Programme?
QEPNT is the UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position, Navigation & Timing. We bring together industry, academia and government to create quantum technologies which will be key for national security, critical national infrastructure and sectors such as aerospace, transport, energy, finance, communications and agriculture. Established in 2024, we are one of five Hubs set up as part of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme, to ensure the UK benefits from the potential of quantum technologies.
Maintaining the integrity of the UK’s security and infrastructure through cutting-edge research is at the heart of the QEPNT Hub. We're developing technologies that will harness the power of quantum timing and position sensors to allow us to free ourselves from our reliance on satellite positioning and help to make the UK a more secure, and technologically-advanced nation.
Image Credit: UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position, Navigation & Timing
What are the main challenges in QEPNT that quantum technologies aim to solve?
Navigation in the UK, and indeed around the world, relies on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). As a result, losing GNSS would result in massive economic and societal consequences. Additionally, GNSS does not work underground and underwater, simply because in those cases, it’s impossible to communicate with the satellites that make it possible. As a result, we need to develop robust technology that allows for navigation in GNSS-denied environments. There are a number of traditional, classical technologies that allow us to navigate in these cases, but classical systems are prone to drift and other annoying errors. Quantum technologies that sense motion have their own issues, mainly in that they’re relatively slow compared to their classical counterparts, but they are also relatively immune to the aforementioned drifts. If we put these two types of technology together, they complement each other nicely, and we have a system that is overall better: more robust and less prone to errors.
How will the new technology being developed be more resilient, compared to traditional GPS-based systems?
To navigate without GNSS, you need three things: you need to know where you were when you started, how fast you’re accelerating and rotating, and what time it is. The QEPNT Hub is working on using quantum technologies to improve all of these systems. Quantum-enabled versions of our current technology will rely on the fact that all of the photons in a laser source are (basically) the same, and likewise, all of the atoms of a given type (isotope) are the same. The most accurate clocks, the best sensors of motion, and the best sensors of magnetic fields rely on how atoms react to light, and the behaviour of these systems is always going to be the same because of the immutable characteristics of atoms and photons. As such, by precisely controlling atoms and photons, we can build better, more resilient navigation systems.
What are some of the key quantum technologies your team is working on, such as atomic clocks and inertial sensors, and what breakthroughs are you seeing?
My team at the University of Bristol is working on a means of building quantum-enabled inertial sensing systems (that is, sensors of acceleration and rotation) that rely on very cold rubidium atoms trapped in a periodic crystal of light known as an optical lattice. By modulating, or literally shaking the optical lattice, we can precisely control our atoms. The addition of an acceleration or rotation will change how the atoms react to the light modulation, and from there, we can back out a signal. Previous work has shown that we can tailor the atoms’ response to a given signal magnitude and frequency, and we also think that because the atoms stay trapped in the lattice, the system should be more robust. However, no one really knows what the fundamental limits to the sensitivity of our sensor should be (although we can make some good guesses), and as a whole, the technology we’re developing is still quite immature, even for quantum systems. As a result, we’re hoping to make some great breakthroughs over the course of the Hub: learning more about the advantages and limitations of our systems while also making it more scalable, since our experiment still takes up a whole room!
Your hub collaborates with both academia and industry—what strategies do you use to bridge the gap between research and real-world implementation?
Central to the success of the Hub is the community of world-class researchers from institutions throughout the UK. We work with government and industry to co-design solutions to address the challenges our world faces today.
A main aim of the UK’s National Quantum Technology Programme is the development of technologies for economic and societal benefit, which is largely achieved through partnership between academic and industrial organisations.
We will be looking to facilitate the exploitation of technologies developed in the Hub in a variety of ways. This includes bringing key industrial and government stakeholders together with the Hub at events to establish where outputs from the Hub can provide the most practical value and creating technical roadmaps to understand the pathway to real commercial value for Hub technology. Additionally, we will undertake projects with industry to support activities such as demonstrating systems in the field and making some of the devices we’re developing in the Hub manufacturable through funding streams like InnovateUK and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. We’re also going to be supporting several spinouts from the Hub to support the UK supply chain in these areas.
Image Credit: Dr Carrie Weidner
Beyond national security, what industries stand to benefit the most from quantum-based PNT solutions?
I think national security is the obvious one, but I think a lot of people don’t realize that better inertial sensing, timing, and magnetic field mapping have implications for environmental sensing. The technology we are working on can make it easier for us to monitor ocean and geologic conditions. We can find underground structures like caves and monitor seismic activity. Finally, better clocks and sensors can help us understand fundamental physics like gravitational waves. Sensors like the ones we’re developing could end up in all kinds of real-world technology, and we’re just scratching the surface of the potential applications right now.
What are the biggest challenges in scaling up QEPNT technologies for widespread use?
Right now, the biggest challenge is making things small and mass-manufacturable. This is something that our Hub is particularly well-suited to address. Our partners in Glasgow and Strathclyde, as well as Loughborough and Cambridge, have made incredible advances in making the required photonic (light-based) and atomic systems smaller and more amenable to use in real-world systems. There’s still a long way to go before we can really manufacture these systems at scale, but the steps we’re taking in the Hub will be instrumental in lowering the size, weight, power, and cost of useful quantum-enabled navigation systems.
Looking ahead, how do you see quantum-enabled PNT shaping the future of navigation, and what milestones should we watch for in the coming years?
I think quantum-enabled PNT will reduce our reliance on GPS, which will help all sorts of vehicles become more resilient in a world with increasing uncertainty due to GPS jamming and other less-than-ideal conditions, for example. This will not only keep people safer, but it will reduce undesired consequences due to navigational errors.
About the Speaker
Dr Carrie Weidner is a Lecturer in the Quantum Engineering Technology Laboratories at the University of Bristol, UK, where she leads a research group concerned with the control and manipulation of quantum systems.
Carrie did her PhD in JILA at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA under Prof. Dana Z. Anderson, and she worked on building inertial sensors using atoms trapped in optical lattice potentials. She then moved to Aarhus University, DK to work on quantum simulation using quantum gas microscopy, as well as dabbling in robust quantum control and quantum physics education research.
Since moving to Bristol in 2022, Weidner has been setting up her own research group focused broadly on (mostly) experimental quantum sensing, simulation, and information with atoms in optical lattice potentials. Dr Weidner also continues to work in robust quantum control, quantum physics education, and is increasingly interested in the interplay between atomic physics and integrated optics.
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