The entry was marked on Monday by the launch of Australia’s first superconducting quantum technology company which has been spun out of the University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council.

UQ’s Professor Tom Stace and Associate Professor Arkady Federov have launched Analog Quantum Circuits to build technology that was 1000 times smaller than what was available.

The launch followed a decade of theoretical and experimental research on engineering quantum systems.

AQC secured $3 million in venture capital investment from Uniseed to fund further research and development.

“Commercial circulators are the size of a matchbox and we have managed to shrink them to a few tens of micrometres, which is a fraction of the width of a human hair,” Stace said.

“A nation or organisation that has access to quantum technology will have a head start in important areas that are related to national security, computation, and communication.

“It would be fair to describe it as a technological race and is something that requires significant investment and collaboration with close allies.

“We are leading quantum hardware development for international markets by building on the basic research that was done in Queensland with the extremely talented people we have trained.”

A quantum computer is measured by the number of elementary parts called qubits, and it is estimated that at least a million of these will be needed before they become useful for complex computations.

“We’re building miniature components that will scale with the quantum computer, so companies building the rest of the system are able to incorporate our technology,” Stace said.

AQC was the first superconducting quantum technology startup in Australia. Its launch follows work done previously with the Australian Research Council’s centre of excellence for engineered quantum systems.

The work is carried out in cryogenic dilution refrigerators that operate at minus 273 degrees Celsius, which is 100 times colder than outer space.

Federov said quantum hardware was “exquisitely sensitive’’, and even the ambient electrical noise at room temperature is 10,000 times too loud.

Because of that, the team was building a microwave circulator to shield that noise.

“We are developing part of the communications channel between the outside world and the quantum computer others are trying to build, so that interface technology must sustain the temperature difference between the interior and exterior of the fridge,” he said.

Uniseed Investment Manager Paul Butler said AQC was a great opportunity to support Australia’s quantum strategy.