Welcome to AQuRA!
AQuRA, the Advanced Quantum Clock for Real World Applications, is a European consortium of five industry leaders, two national measurement institutes and three universities. The AQuRA clock is will be the first industry led clock prototype aiming for instability and uncertainty at less than one tenth of a second over the age of the universe.
Such precise and accurate clocks are crucial for the precise navigation, communications and sensing challenges that underpin our modern society. 
The goal of AQuRA is to make the best clocks in the world robust and compact enough for real world applications. These "optical atomic clocks" are amazingly accurate. If such a clock would have been turned on during the Big Bang, almost fourteen billion years ago, the clock would still be ahead or behind less than one tenth of a single second today!
AQuRA aims to make existing optical clocks smaller and more robust. Currently, these clocks do not look like the clocks in your home – they are complicated machines that fill entire laboratories. iqClock wants to make these clocks transportable, so that they can be used for measurements in the field and eventually even sent to space using satellites. This could for example make GPS systems much more accurate. AQuRA is one of the quantum technology related projects that together form the European Commission's Quantum Flagship initiative. On this website, you will find our latest news, an overview of the project's tasks, a more detailed description of the twelve partner institutes that make the project possible and open positions. as well as an overview of media appearances and materials. If you want to know more about AQuRA, don't hesitate to contact us! More about the AQuRA project... |
Recent news
2 December 2022 - AQuRA kickoff meeting
The AQuRA project kicked off quickly with the first consortium meeting today beginning with developing the system requirements and design work package.
1 December 2022 - AQuRA begins!Today the AQuRA project kicked off with 10 partners across Europe. This industry led consortium will collaborate over the next three and a half years to make state of the art laboratory clocks robust and compact enough for real world applications.
Modern atomic quantum clocks are the most precise and accurate scientific instruments ever created. Currently, these so-called optical atomic clocks are mostly found in physics laboratories, often filling an entire laboratory. The AQuRA-consortium brings together European universities, industry partners and EU metrology institutes in an effort to make quantum clocks more robust and compact. This will allow real-world applications like significantly improved and faster telecommunication networks, or underground exploration using fluctuations in gravity. The consortium received a €7.5 million European Commission Horizon grant to achieve their goals over the next three and a half years. |
