The Ministry of education and research wants to bring the development of the quantum technology for a future secure data communication in Germany and Europe.

In a first step, to explore the technology and a pilot between two authorities, the route will be tested. For the project “QuNET” should be provided in a first step, 165 million euros over seven years, is ready, announced Minister of research, Anja Karliczek (CDU) in Berlin.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft intends to develop, together with the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and the German center for air and space travel as the Basis for a first network for quantum communication.

trusted communication is the basis for a free society, said Karliczek. Quantum technology offer a unique opportunity to transmit sensitive information against eavesdropping, better than all previous methods. Each of the bugging attempt can immediately be noticed. The Initiative aims to develop the physical fundamentals, to a highly secure network for the Federal government to incur. The international competition was great, said Karliczek. “We need to bring the research to do this so quickly.”

China, for example, have already been carried out in 2017, an attempt to quantum-based satellite communication successfully, said Karliczek. Germany and Europe would have to expand their own competences, to be dependent on other countries. “QuNET” should be a first step towards a pan-European architecture.

Already 30 years ago, it had been the first idea, to use quantum technology for the use of secure communication, said Gerd Leuchs of the Max-Planck-Institute for the physics of light. The theory is based on own set of physical principles that has given up the researchers so far, always a mystery. Thus, an object price give for a measurement, never in all of his information, the measurements could not be repeated as in the conventional physics, explained Leuchs. So far, it is, according to Fraunhofer only possible to communicate from one to another point, and only at distances of up to 100 kilometers. In Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia is to be created, therefore, an infrastructure as a test track.

dpa