A new project in the UK plans to build a powerful source of quantum lasers

Bay Photonics, a leading UK company in photonic integrated circuit (PIC) packaging, has announced a partnership with the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to participate in Q-Pods, a quantum technology project funded by UK innovation arm Innovate UK.

Q-Pods are a dedicated mechanical and heat-stabilized optoelectronic module used to drive magneto-optical traps (MOTs) used in several UK quantum projects. The Q-Pods project significantly reduces size, weight, and power and cost (SWAP-C) by integrating all the basic components into one solid package.

The systems currently used in Quantum projects rely heavily on laboratory-level components, manually calibrating optical elements on optical tables. Unfortunately, this manual calibration method often leads to system instability and degrades performance due to continuous calibration drift. This leads to difficulties in system-level production of quantum products based on atomic traps.

For this project, Bay Photonics will work with NPL and a User Advisory Committee (UAB) consisting of several end users and system integrators to develop Q-Pods. Several UAB members are developing/owning systems that include various magneto-optical trap (MOT) room configurations and have indicated a need for Q-Pods to enhance their product offerings.

Q-Pods offer significantly reduced optical alignment drift compared to existing systems (compared to manually tuning the X-Y stage/stand), fewer components (no need to align optics), significant improvements in mechanical and thermal stability, and a smaller profile and larger production scale.

Q-Pods will make Bay Photonics a major supplier to UAB and the wider cold atom sector. With the enhanced design, they will seek market opportunities to exploit ion capture in a range of applications, such as quantum computing, high-speed telecommunications and lidar.

Source: OFweek