CERN + White Rabbit Co-Development
A working thesis for collaborating with CERN QTI and the White Rabbit Collaboration on vendor-neutral orchestration of distributed quantum systems — written as a proposal, not a partnership announcement. Nothing on this page is approved, endorsed, or funded by CERN.
What you get in the next four minutes: the funding reality, the licensing path that costs nothing, the structural PNG constraint and its academic bridge, the IP boundary, and three costed pilots you could start this quarter. Read it, then send a precise enquiry.
EigenOS is a vendor-neutral orchestration layer for distributed FTQC.
The claim being made is about orchestration, timing, provenance and reproducibility. The claim being rejected is “achieve FTQC first” — that is a 5-to-10 year hardware race that no orchestration layer wins, and asserting it would make every other number on this page worthless.
EigenOS provides the L3 orchestration layer; CERN provides the WR timing substrate. Together we publish vendor-neutral orchestration results for distributed QPU networks. The work runs in our own environment, on synthetic data, first.
“EigenOS + CERN will achieve FTQC first.” Not a realistic goal, not a useful goal, and not the basis on which a standards contribution or a research paper should be made.
The whole thesis in five rows
Engagement modelIn-kind software contribution
CERN cash to usNone — co-development only
WR membershipOptional · CHF 15K/yr · deferred to Q2 2027+
Year-1 engagement cost$0-8K
Scoped proposals3 pilots, costed and dated
CERN does not typically fund companies
The original assumption — that CERN QTI offers financial project assistance to companies — is mostly false. CERN is not a grant funder, an investor, or a customer. It is a co-development hub that publishes what it finds and shares IP and engineering effort. The available routes are co-development and CERN Knowledge Transfer licensing, nothing else.
The model that follows from that is in-kind software contribution. EigenOS contributes the orchestration, provenance and audit code; CERN QTI contributes expertise, review and access to the European quantum ecosystem. No cash changes hands, and the relationship is only real once a written scope exists.
- A grant funder for companies
- An equity investor
- A customer for commercial products
- A direct financial backer
- A line item in the EigenOS revenue plan
- A co-development hub
- An honest broker for knowledge sharing
- A technology provider — WR timing, photonics, cryogenics
- A neutral testbed where competitors put equipment because CERN does not compete
- An IP-and-expertise sharing partner
EigenOS brings
- →Vendor-neutral L2/L3 orchestration IP — 13 claims · 3 families (TIGHT v3)
- →EQL v0.1 — a versioned experiment manifest for timing-dependent runs
- →BSaaS — a reproducible experiment and reporting container
- →T5.4 Claims Audit — scoped performance-claim auditing
- →A per-shot ledger and error budget (QUOTA, roadmap)
CERN brings
- →White Rabbit timing — sub-nanosecond synchronisation, picosecond precision
- →The Geneva Quantum Network testbed and local laboratory runs
- →Honest-broker credibility — CERN does not compete for quantum customers
- →Real quantum-network and HEP use cases
- →Access to the European quantum ecosystem and standards bodies
Neither side is buying from the other. Both sides build something neither could build alone — and the entry point is CoC4 (Collaboration for Impact), the work area is CoC3 (Quantum Networks and Communication), where White Rabbit for Quantum sits.
Cost. The in-kind model puts Year-1 CERN engagement cost at $0-8K, most of it optional travel to QT4HEP 2026 at CERN (23-27 November 2026) and proposal preparation. An earlier estimate of ~$34K assumed a paid membership and a full travel programme; that estimate is superseded. If you need cash, the routes are NSF, DOE, DARPA, the EU Quantum Flagship and Horizon Europe — not CERN.
White Rabbit is LGPL-2.1+. Free for commercial use.
White Rabbit is not a paid playground and it is not a members-only product. The firmware and software are open source under LGPL-2.1+, which permits commercial use, modification and distribution without a fee. A White Rabbit Collaboration membership costs CHF 15K/year (about USD $17K) and is optional — we defer that decision to Q2 2027 and later, and only take it once a pilot has produced a validated artifact and a specific project fit exists.
| Component | Licence | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| WR firmware and software | LGPL-2.1+ | Free for commercial use, modification and distribution. No membership required to use it. |
| WR hardware and gateware | CERN-OHL-W-2.0+ | Weakly reciprocal — only modifications to the WR core itself must remain open. External Material stays yours. |
| WR documentation | CC-BY-SA-4.0+ | Attribution required, share-alike on derivative documentation. |
| EigenOS orchestration layer | Apache 2.0 (or proprietary) | Treated as External Material relative to WR. The WR licence does not reach EigenOS IP. |
- +20 guaranteed hours of dedicated WR engineer support, plus up to 30 more free hours if available
- +Voting on WRC technology direction
- +Use of the WR trademark on a commercial product
- +Free training catalogue
- +Access to the Associate Lab testing ecosystem
- +CERN Venture Connect programme benefits
Paying for prestige alone is a bad trade. Membership earns its cost only once we have a validated contribution, a named project fit, clear access expectations, and a specific blocker that needs an engineer.
- Using WR technology under LGPL-2.1+
- Modifying WR code for your own integration
- Building proprietary software that interfaces with WR
- Academic research and paper authorship
- Public forum participation and questions
- Attending conferences such as QT4HEP
- Working with academic WR members — their access transfers through collaboration
- Contributing in-kind to CERN QTI co-development projects
PNG is not a CERN Member State
Papua New Guinea is neither a CERN Member State nor an Associate Member State. That removes automatic access to CERN's funding mechanisms, visit grants and formal Associate status. It does not close the door: the QTI mandate reads “within Member States and beyond”, and the ATLAS and CMS experiments carry participants from many non-Member States. The non-Member State question is a procedural detail to be solved — it is not the technical one.
The path is an academic bridge: a CERN Member State research group that is the formal counterpart, with EigenOS as the technical co-developer and in-kind software contributor. Lead with the technical fit, not the geography.
| Candidate | Affiliation | Role in the bridge |
|---|---|---|
| Jeroen Koelemeij | VU Amsterdam (Netherlands) | Primary White Rabbit bridge — own lab plus Nikhef, VSL, SURF and the OPNT spin-off. First call for Pilot 1. |
| Stephanie Wehner | TU Delft (Netherlands) | Quantum Internet Alliance lead. Fits EQL and QORCH; bridges Pilots 1 and 3. |
| Jens Eisert | FU Berlin (Germany) | Quantum networking and modular quantum architectures. |
| Tracy Northup | University of Innsbruck (Austria) | Trapped-ion networking and ion-trap photonic links. |
| Hugues de Riedmatten | ICFO Barcelona (Spain) | Quantum frequency conversion and photonic memories. |
A Member State university or institute is the formal CERN counterpart. It contributes laboratory access and the WR hardware; EigenOS contributes the software and the engineering. IP is co-owned with a licence back for commercial use.
A directly scoped software contribution to CERN QTI co-development: the EQL manifest, the synthetic-data replay harness, the audit report. No CERN access required to build it, and no dependency on CERN saying yes.
EigenOS stays “External Material”
The White Rabbit licence defines External Material as anything combined with the licensed technology solely by interfacing with it through a documented interface described in that technology. External Material can be licensed under any licence, or kept as a trade secret.
The EigenOS orchestration layer — QORCH, EQL, BSaaS, T5.4, QUOTA — interfaces with WR through documented APIs. It is therefore External Material under CERN-OHL-W-2.0+, and the implementation can stay Apache 2.0. Only modifications to the WR core itself must remain open if we distribute them. The WR licence does not reach into EigenOS IP, and no EigenOS IP is transferred to CERN.
Stays openModifications to the WR core, if and when we distribute them. WR documentation derivatives under CC-BY-SA-4.0+ carry attribution and share-alike.
Stays ours13 claims · 3 families (TIGHT v3) covering the L2/L3 orchestration layer, with P11 MMQCR as the parent filing. The Apache 2.0 implementation of QORCH, EQL, BSaaS and the T5.4 audit engine.
Not permittedThe “White Rabbit Certified” badge, the WR trademark on a commercial product, or any wording that implies CERN endorsement. Membership is what those require.
If it is a documented interface boundary, the licence stops there. Every CERN-facing deliverable we publish must be checkable against that boundary before it leaves the building — which is the same discipline the T5.4 audit engine applies to vendor claims.
White Rabbit only matters at the top two levels
CERN's value-add is concentrated in the upper deployment levels and, inside the seven-layer stack, at L2-L4 (execution, orchestration, programming) and L7 (discovery and audit). Below that, White Rabbit is not required and pitching it is noise.
| Level | Shape | WR fit | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1-L2 | Simulator / noisy simulator | Not required | No real hardware, so no timing substrate is needed. Every EigenOS module already runs in simulation. |
| L3 | Physical, single vendor | Partial | WR is optional here. BSaaS via the vendor API, T5.4 audits, QORCH. Pilot 1 fits at this level. |
| L4 | Hybrid, multi-vendor | High | QORCH, EQL, P11 MMQCR. This is the co-development core — multi-vendor orchestration above the WR timing plane. |
| L5 | Distributed FTQC | High | QUOTA, EQL with FTQC primitives, WR timing integration. A Q3 2027+ horizon, not a current deliverable. |
Seven layers: L1 Hardware · L2 Execution · L3 Orchestration · L4 Programming · L5 SDK/API · L6 Security · L7 Discovery. The orchestration layer is where the EigenOS work lands; the timing substrate is where the CERN work lands. They are complementary layers, not competitors.
Three proposals, costed and dated
Not thirty deliverables. Three narrowly-scoped questions, each answerable without CERN lab access, each with a named cost, a duration and a quarter. The first one is buildable this quarter on synthetic data.
Timing-aware experiment provenance
QuestionCan a structured experiment record make timing-dependent quantum-network results easier to reproduce and diagnose?
DeliverablesVersioned EQL manifest (JSON schema) · one read-only WR data adapter · replayable dataset · replay report · reproduction instructions
ModulesEQL (manifest spec) · BSaaS (replay container) · T5.4 (report validation)
VerdictBest first proposal. Developable entirely in PNG on synthetic data. No WR lab access required, and the highest first-paper probability of the three.
Timing faults and quantum-event analysis
QuestionHow do timing changes affect event matching and the reliability of a specified quantum-network measurement?
DeliverablesStudy of sync loss · timing-offset changes · event-record misalignment · missing telemetry · event-selection windows
ModulesT5.4 (validation) · BSaaS (replay) · UCS (capability) · PCAI (anomaly detection)
VerdictPromising, but it needs a quantum-optics collaborator and pre-agreed metrics. Doable with the academic bridge partner without CERN lab access.
Offline link-stability analytics
QuestionCan classical telemetry identify changing fibre conditions early enough to inform an experiment?
DeliverablesTime-aligned telemetry ingestion · baseline correlation analysis · anomaly detection · held-out testing · uncertainty reporting
ModulesPCAI (anomaly detection) · Discovery (correlation mining) · UCS (capability)
VerdictHardest and most demanding, and the most commercially valuable — the same analytics carry over to telecom network operations.
Who this would be with
These are the roles CERN publishes for quantum networking and for White Rabbit. Use the published functional channels rather than guessing personal addresses. Nothing below implies a conversation has happened.
Edoardo MartelliCoordination — CERN networking and quantum-network programmes
Annick TeepeQuantum communications
Amanda Díez FernándezPartnerships
Javier SerranoWhite Rabbit specialist
Maciej LipinskiWhite Rabbit specialist
One hypothesis. One data source. One technical interface. Named scientific and engineering contacts. Measurable acceptance criteria. Resource contribution. Data and publication rights. And a stop/go decision. If CERN has no capacity or sees no fit, the software work continues with another White Rabbit user, a university, or an equipment partner — silence is not permission to claim collaboration.
What this page does not claim
A collaboration thesis is only useful if the negative space is explicit. Everything below is false today, and stays false until there is a paper or a written agreement behind it.
That a CERN partnership exists. There is none — no paper, no written agreement, no signed scope.
That CERN has approved, endorsed, tested or certified EigenOS.
That EigenOS has laboratory access to CERN or to the Geneva Quantum Network.
That White Rabbit qualification or trademark use has been obtained.
That EigenOS will achieve FTQC, let alone achieve it first.
That any BSaaS vendor backend runs real hardware. All 8 are simulated.
Start with the artifact, not the introduction
A working artifact is the only thing that gets a reply. Pilot 01 needs a versioned EQL manifest, a synthetic timing dataset and a replay report — all buildable in PNG, none of it dependent on a CERN decision. If you want to join that, or to open the conversation with an academic bridge partner, write to partnerships@eigenosquantum.com.