EU funding to boost "PhoG" photon gun project to develop quantum light source

Nov. 7, 2018
The PhoG project is part of the EU-funded Flagship on Quantum Technologies initiative to create a quantum network.

The EU-funded Flagship on Quantum Technologies initiative has been set up to create a European-wide network to deliver the knowledge, technology and research necessary for a world-leading industry. A 2.6 million euro project, PhoG (see below) led by researchers at the University of St Andrews (St Andrews, Scotland), is part of a 1 billion euro scheme to boost quantum technologies in Europe.

As part of the initiative, the Sub-Poissonian Photon Gun by Coherent Diffusive Photonics (PhoG), led by the University of St Andrews, is an international project which aims to deliver a compact, versatile, deterministic source of quantum light or photon gun--PhoG--based on integrated waveguide networks with engineered loss, and to develop its applications in metrology and other quantum technology tasks.

Natalia Korolkova of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews said, "We are delighted to have received this funding and to be part of this pan-European collaboration stretching from fundamental science to industrial implementations."

PhoG is one of 20 projects selected from 140 proposals submitted to the initiative. Overall, the Flagship on Quantum Technologies initiative will involve more than 5000 researchers in academia and industry with the aim of placing Europe at the forefront of quantum innovation with funding invested over the next ten years.

Quantum technology is a comparatively young field associated with quantum mechanics--originally described more than 100 years ago by the German researcher Max Planck--being harnessed for technological applications. It involves finding ways of controlling individual atoms, ions, solids and light quanta. A first quantum revolution paved the way for application-relevant technologies such as transistors and lasers. Now, research associations are embarking on a second quantum revolution.

The EU Flagship initiative aims to ensure that Europe is at the forefront of this second quantum revolution. In the long term, the program will cover a broad spectrum of applications, including powerful quantum computers and quantum simulators, novel quantum sensors, and a tamper-proof quantum Internet.

SOURCE: University of St Andrews; https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/st-andrews-led-project-receives-e2.6m-boost/

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.

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