Such alignment is critical for chip-scale devices that employ the radiation emitted by quantum dots to store and transmit quantum information.

For the first time, the NIST researchers achieved this level of accuracy across the entire image from an optical microscope, enabling them to correct the positions of many individual quantum dots.

A model developed by the researchers predicts that if microscopes are calibrated using the new standards, then the number of high-performance devices could increase by as much as a hundred-fold.

That new ability could enable quantum information technologies that are slowly emerging from research laboratories to be more reliably studied and efficiently developed into commercial products.

Devices that capture the light from millions of quantum dots, including chip-scale lasers and optical amplifiers, have made the transition from laboratory experiments to commercial products.