Quantum Technologies and the Engineering of Josephson JunctionBased Sensors: Disruptive Innovation as a Strategic Differential for National Security and Defense

Abstract

The so-called area of quantum technologies is a new and disruptive technological field, essentially from physics and engineering, with the ability to affect almost all human activities. They are based on the properties of quantum mechanics like quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, and quantum superposition. Examples of areas of application of these emerging technologies are quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum sensing, quantum cryptography, quantum internet, quantum imaging, quantum metrology, quantum biology, among others. These technologies are of the interest of both the defense and security industry, and military and governmental actors. For military applications, and after a strong advanced engineering process, these technologies introduce new capabilities, improving effectiveness and increasing precision, thus leading to the so-called quantum warfare, wherein new military strategies, doctrines, policies, and ethics should be established. In particular, these military applications of quantum technologies can be described for various warfare domains like land, air, space, electronic, cyber, and underwater warfare and also for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. Among those applications mentioned before, quantum computing is expected to have a number of important uses such as optimization and machine learning, associated to both artificial intelligence and blockchain. Quantum computers are perhaps best known for their expected ability to carry out Shor’s algorithm, which can be used to factorize large numbers and is an important process in the securing of data transmissions, essential for military applications. In this review of our own work, we show the physics and some of the applications of the Josephson junction which plays and important and essential role in the fabrication of quantum computers with superconducting qubits. Nowadays, applications of Josephson junction devices go from the most sensitive sensor to measure magnetic flux, called S.QU.I.D. (from Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) to the core of quantum computers, the quantum bits. The Josephson junction is an old quantum engine for a rising new world with incredible disruptive technological possibilities in engineering, especially in military applications where it plays a fundamental strategic differential for National Security and Defense.