Progress in particle physics relies on appropriate detection techniques. While over the last decades, a significant degree of standardisation has occurred for high-energy experiments, new detector approaches enabled by quantum technologies are increasingly opening up new parameter spaces in low-energy particle physics. At the same time, some of these technologies might also allow for higher sensitivity detectors at high energies.

Several attempts to explore the application of specific experimental techniques stemming from the fields of quantum optics, nanocrystals or 2-dimensional materials to experiments in high-energy physics have begun, while collaborations on topics relevant for low-energy particle physics approaches (with implications for BSM searches) in the areas of atomic interferometry, ultrasensitive cryogenic signal acquisition, and calorimetric detection of axions are being looked into.

Many developments stemming from advances in quantum technologies have opened up new parameter spaces for the search for BSM physics, with particular implications in searches for symmetry violations, searches for unknown interactions, searches for ultralight dark matter particles or fields, and precision determinations of masses or binding energies. In many cases, it is only the availability of a new technology that allows initially exploring and then subsequently systematically investigating these new parameter spaces, requiring the development of dedicated highly sensitive detection schemes. In many cases, technologies relevant to quantum computing or quantum communication form the basis of measurements sensitive to new fundamental physics or violations of symmetries. Reaching ultimate sensitivities often requires scaling such devices far beyond the initial proof-of-principle, an area in which expertise in designing, producing, and assembling large-scale devices — as is the case for high energy particle physics — may become crucial. At the same time, guidance from theory can help identify particularly interesting topics, can help avoid duplication, and indicate overlap with more sensitive searches that may have been carried out via other technologies.

Objectives

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Current and future activities