Quantum Characterization, Calibration, and Control (QC3)

DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory–Army Research Office (ARL-ARO) in partnership with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is soliciting proposals for research in Quantum Characterization, Calibration, and Control (QC3). This is a proposed four-year program and is primarily focused on three topic areas in the field of quantum computing (QC). The topic areas are as follows:

(1) Characterization: • Primary Research Goal: Advance the state-of-the-art to quantitatively assess the performance of qubit operations in multi-qubit circuits and to extract error-models.

(2) Calibration: • Primary Research Goal: Advance state-of-the-art for bring up of multi-qubit circuits for high-performance operations near or better than fault-tolerance thresholds.

(3) Control: • Primary Research Goal: Advance state-of-the-art control techniques to operate multi-qubit circuits operating near or better than fault-tolerant thresholds, accounting for the specifics of error-models for the circuit. For this BAA, by error-models is meant the quantitative (Topic 1) description of the total, the types, and distribution of errors encountered by qubit operations in multi-qubit circuits.

Research proposals to these topics are sought that address the circuit gate-based model of quantum computation overhead and inefficiencies, as well as improve the accuracy and stability of characterization, calibration, and control schemes, in a manner relevant for qubit arrays in the 10s-100s of qubits scale for early fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) applications.

Amendment 1 Posted: To extend the proposal due date to 26 August 2025. Also changing the award announcement date to 26 September 2025. No other changes.