ORSAM – Optical Reference Systems via Additive Manufacturing

ORSAM seeks to address the critical national infrastructure challenge of delivering cost effective, resilient, distributed timing within the telecommunications core and mobile access networks that we all depend on to deliver the emergency service network, data centre access and interconnect, Industrial IoT, financial transactions and nearly all other forms of data access, video streaming and communications. Fundamentally the modern communications network is critically dependent on local, and network level timing and synchronisation.

Additive Manufacturing (AM), more commonly known as "3D printing", is a key emerging technology that can provide a step-change in the quest to make optomechanical devices lighter, less sensitive to their external environment and easier/cheaper to manufacture. AM allows the rapid, cost-effective manufacture of geometrically complex parts, featuring performance-enhancing structures that would be near impossible or extremely expensive and laborious to produce via conventional methods. So far, the application of AM within opto-mechanics has been extremely limited. Developing design methods and exploiting AM techniques for applications in optomechanical devices will be key to the future of the telecommunications and quantum industries.

The current state-of-the-art in AM optical reference cavities, developed by the University of Birmingham represents a convincing proof-of-principle of the applicability of AM within the TFS sector and the potential benefits it offers, showing that an optimised, vibration insensitive cavity suitable for manufacturing via AM can be designed, simulated and constructed from Invar. Project ORSAM aims to take this further and fully exploit the benefits of AM to produce resilient and lightweight optical references for use in critical infrastructure in remote locations outside of laboratory settings. Proving the efficacy of AM for optomechanical components will open a new market within the quantum sector and extend its application into other areas such as sensing, medical imaging and analytical equipment.