SOMERVILLE, MA—MagiQ Technologies, a company specializing in quantum cryptography for network security, announced the creation of a new business unit called MagiQ Research Labs (MRL) that will serve industrial, commercial, and research customers. The new MRL unit is made up of a group of researchers in diverse areas who provide a broad technical base for design, development, and consulting in a wide spectrum of technologies with applications in both the public and pri vate sectors. These include medical optics, quantum information, fiber sensing, aerospace, and defense applications. MRL will also be responsible for contracts with government agencies such as the Army, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and NASA.
While MagiQ Technologies will continue to provide networking and security products (such as the company’s QPN Security Gateway) and network security architecture and deployment consulting services, MRL will provide custom products and services including fiber-optic interferometers, C/L-band pulsed lasers and tunable pulsed lasers, fiber sensors, and contract R&D services.
Michael LaGasse, VP of engineering at MagiQ Technologies, says that the company has been doing some of this custom work in the background without publicizing it. “We’ve done quantum key distribution, several product cycles such as a hardware box that encrypts network traffic using quantum key distribution, and some government contract work. These are the types of custom capabilities we have, which the market may not have been aware of before.We hope that the announcement of MRL will bring an awareness of these capabilities to our customers.”
MagiQ specializes in quantum-key distribution (QKD) technology, which uses quantum properties of single photons. The polarization states or phase states of single photons enable optical sensors used in many applications. “Our fiber sensors came out of our QKD technology,” says LaGasse. “We needed to sense the phase of single photons, so we developed a whole range of capabilities and products designed to do that.”
In a time when the economy is subject to threat of the “R” word (recession—dare we say it?) and consumer confidence is low, the dri ver behind MagiQ’s growth, according to LaGasse, is this new specialized capability for QKD-based single-photon sensors, particularly for defense applications.The same sensors are also used in oil exploration, which is experiencing a market surge, like defense. Optical and quantum-related research and development occurring in labs and corporations is driving growth in MagiQ’s interferometer business.“Furthermore,” says LaGasse, “medical research is just coming around to embracing the technology that enables detection and processing of low-level light in biological tissues—that application for our sensors is just coming to light. It’s deep in the discussion phases.”
