A cloud of cold atoms will guide the planes of the future

It will be a small cloud of atoms cooled to -200 degrees to guide planes and submarines everywhere in the future, doing without satellite navigation systems such as GPS. It is called Atom chip and it is the innovative quantum technology that the French company Thales is developing inside its quantum laboratories in Paris that have been opened to the press.

“Today, satellite navigation systems, such as Galileo or GPS, are essential for practically every vehicle that moves, from airplanes to submarines, and even for our cars. But it is not always possible to have satellite networks available,” said Arnaud Brignon, head of Research and Technology at Thales. Technical problems or inconveniences of various kinds can limit GPS access, while other types of limitations can be encountered in war scenarios, such as signal jamming systems or the desire to not be visible and therefore avoid any communication. From these needs was born the idea of ​​creating devices capable of always maintaining orientation without having to communicate with satellites. A technology that is simply impossible without quantum technologies and that is rapidly approaching its arrival on the market, expected in 2030.

The heart of the device is a chip capable of capturing previously unthinkable details and a cloud of atoms suspended and cooled to -200 degrees C inside a small cube 2 centimeters on each side. Atoms that are transformed into extremely precise measuring instruments: their 'vibrations' are transformed into the beat of an ultra-precise clock and into data to reconstruct every minimal movement.

“Thanks to quantum technologies we can reach previously unthinkable levels of precision, a sensitivity thousands of times higher than what was possible until now and that opens the doors to things that were impossible until now,” added Brignon. The result is a system capable of reconstructing every movement made over time and therefore always knowing where it is, all with an incredibly low error rate and so far simply impossible with classical technologies.