The laser, which is the size of a pack of playing cards, can be used in clocks and sensors.
Optocap (Alter Technology Group) and the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics in Glasgow as part of a one year consortium, that required extensive testing and development has resulted in Optocap manufacturing miniature lasers for quantum and metrology applications, that are fabricated using Optocap’s advanced packaging techniques that employ high reliability telecoms manufacturing and space qualified processes.
Other possible uses for the laser could be in the next generation of sat-nav systems and new types of telecoms.
Optocap is now going into series production of these miniature lasers. Stephen Duffy, CEO of Optocap, describes the cooperation in the consortium as fruitful: "We worked with Fraunhofer's Centre for Applied Photonics because they excel in applying world-class laser design knowledge and research to real life problems. Their know-how combined with our sophisticated precision manufacturing expertise and market vision, has produced unique products with a wide range of important applications." For the FLAME project, the consortium received a grant of 900,000 pounds sterling from Innovative UK last year.
Optocap’s miniature laser technology platforms FLAME / REMOTE offer orders of magnitude reduction in size (credit card / smaller than a pack of chewing gum), weight, power-consumption and cost (SWAP-C) only a tenth of much larger models which is a world first compared to our nearest competitors and laboratory based demonstrators.
Optocap’s FLAME & REMOTE lasers will revolutionize quantum commercial viability, research and support a wide range of quantum applications for example, quantum: clocks, QKD, navigation, gravity, imaging … metrology; as they are easily transportable and designed for reliability in real-world portable instrumentation environments where they will be exposed to vibrations, shocks and temperature changes during operation.
A further improvement in augmented reality applications, better communication systems and improved medical devices; are just a few of the many possible applications that can be realized with quantum technology and substantially benefit from our laser technologies.