FGQT Q04 - Standardization Roadmap on Quantum Technologies [written by the CEN-CENELEC Focus Group on Quantum Technologies (FGQT)]

In 2018, the European Commission launched its long term and large scale Quantum Technology FET Flagship Program. The European Commission is also very interested in boosting standards for quantum technologies (QT). The Quantum Flagship has its own cooperation and coordination activities to “coordinate national strategies and activities” and in its “Quantum Manifesto” [1] explicitly advises to form “advisory boards” to promote collaboration in standardization. The CEN/CENELEC Focus Group for Quantum Technologies (FGQT) was formed in June 2020 with the goal to support the plans of the Commission. Currently, a multitude of standardization activities in QT are ongoing worldwide. While there is overlap in certain areas, other areas of this wide technological field are not being addressed at all. A coordinated approach will be highly beneficial to unleash the full potential of standardization for speeding up progress—also because the pool of standardization experts available for quantum technologies is still very limited. Furthermore, not all areas are yet “ready for standardization”, i.e., while in some fields early standardization is capable of boosting progress, it may be a problem in other areas. Thus, an assessment of standardization readiness of the different areas is required, too. The FGQT was established to identify standardization needs and opportunities for the entire field of QT with the final goal to boost the establishment of new industries in Europe and consequently the development and engineering of unprecedented novel devices and infrastructures for the benefit of European citizens. The QT standardization roadmap follows a constructive approach, starting with basic enabling technologies, from which QT components and subsystems are constructed, which again are assembled into QT systems that in turn form composite systems, constituting the building blocks for use cases. Thus, the roadmap is structured approximating very closely the categories of the EC quantum technology FET Flagship Program: quantum communication, quantum computing and simulation, quantum metrology, sensing, and enhanced imaging, while the basic enabling technologies and sub-systems are organized in two pools —thus supporting re-use in the different system categories. The separate types of QT unit systems are then foundations of general QT infrastructures or composite systems. On the level of use cases, the QT standardization roadmap describes basic domains of applicability, so-called “meta use cases”, while the detailed use cases are listed in a separate document of the FGQT: “FGQT Q05 Use Cases”. Finally, the QT standardization roadmap presents an outlook and conclusions, including an actual prioritization of the single identified standardization needs in the form of sequence diagrams (Gantt charts). This approach differs slightly from the QT “Pillar design” of the EU Quantum Flagship but, in our opinion, it extends it and is better adapted to standardization purposes, while the former is optimally suited as a research program design. The FGQT is an open group of European-based experts, working in QT research areas or enabling technologies, and of developers of components, products, or services related to QT. If you are based in Europe, and interested in guidelines and standards to help setting up a research infrastructure, or structuring and boosting your market relevance; if you want to improve coordination with your stakeholders and are interested in coordination and exchange with other experts in the field of QT—please consider to join the CEN/CENELEC FGQT. NOTE 1 European QT standards development in CEN/CENELEC will take place in the new JTC 22 QT (Joint Technical Committee 22 on Quantum Technologies). The work in JTC 22 QT will be guided by the present roadmap doc ument, and it is expected that the FGQT roadmap-development activity will be absorbed/continued by JTC 22 QT