PNRR ICSC Spoke 10 and the QUAX Experiment: Exploring Synergies Between Quantum Computing-Enabling Technologies and Fundamental Research

by Dr Raffaele Di Vora (INFN - LNL)

Thursday 26 Jun 2025, 10:30 → 12:30 Europe/Rome

C. Villi meeting room

The PNRR ICSC initiative to establish a National Center for HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing—of which INFN is a founding member—has created new opportunities to apply advancements in quantum computing-enabling technologies to fundamental research.

As part of its contribution to ICSC Spoke 10, the INFN Legnaro National Laboratories are developing a testing station for Travelling Wave Parametric Amplifiers (TWPAs), intended for qubit readout. This initiative aligns closely with the goals of the QUAX Collaboration, which focuses on high-frequency searches for the cosmological QCD axion, due to the shared use of quantum-limited amplifiers and similar experimental setups.

In this talk, I will present the first results from the newly developed TWPA calibration setup. I will also provide a brief overview of the QUAX experiment’s objectives and highlight several synergistic activities, including the development of optimized microwave cavities and the initial testing of a haloscope that uses a transmon qubit as a low-noise X-band quantum counter.

Finally, I will summarize the current upper limits on the axion-photon coupling achieved by QUAX and discuss the experiment’s future directions.