Broadband Quantum Synthesizer (BQS)

Quantum technologies are a vital component of the industrial strategy in the UK and Canada, with the potential to revolutionize the digital world, expand the capabilities of current imaging devices, and facilitate the development of new drugs using quantum computing to solve complex calculations. Collaborations between UK and Canadian high-tech industries, universities, and research centres are ongoing to translate these scientific concepts into accessible technologies. To achieve this goal, funding of over £1 billion has been pledged by governments and industries. Photonics is among the sectors spearheading the advancement and application of quantum technologies. Light is an ideal carrier of quantum states, essential for quantum communication, and it is also a powerful measuring tool, allowing us to observe the structure and the evolution of matter in processes underpinning the most advanced technologies and life itself.

In the realm of photonics-based quantum technologies, there are two fundamental approaches: either radiation with a limited number of photons is prepared and then measured with the aid of single-photon detectors, extracting the non-classical properties by analyzing the correlations between measured events, or macroscopic quantum states called squeezed light are generated, carrying entanglement among many (billions and more) photons at one time. This latter approach takes the name of continuous-variable quantum optics, it empowers the most advanced metrological endeavours of our time, such as advanced LIGO for the detection of gravitational waves and requires high sensitivity measurements and low losses to retain the quantum properties entailing an enhancement over the classical light. Pulsed squeezed light, with picosecond or shorted duration, is now being applied to enhance sensing of biologically relevant effects, for instance, in microscopes. However, the current technology has limits in how short squeezed light pulses can be effectively generated.

With this feasibility study, we aim to develop a tool for the generation and manipulation of ultrashort squeezed light pulses with durations below 100fs (potentially sub 40fs) and \>3dB squeezing, overcoming the current state-of-the-art and empowering future research in crucial fields such as bio-photonics.