Miles Jamison
RTX BBN Technologies, a research and development company specializing in advanced technology for national security, is developing photonic sensors under a program initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.
DARPA’s Photonic Sensor Initiative
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said Tuesday it is creating photonic chip-scale quantum sensors that utilize exotic quantum states of squeezed light. These deployable low-power photonic sensors are expected to be ten times more precise than existing sensors. They are designed to enhance awareness of environmental factors for missions.
The project, under DARPA’s Intensity Squeezed Photonic Integration with Revolutionary Detection, or INSPIRED, program, is intended for use by the defense and commercial sectors. The sensors are meant to contribute to the enhancement of various fields including light detection and ranging, fiber-based sensing, biosensing, system and network monitoring, navigation and communications.
The RTX business will leverage its understanding of systems integration to lead a team of professionals in the field of quantum and photonic technologies in developing the prototype for the sensor. The team is composed of Saikat Guha of the University of Maryland, quantum and photonic experts from Xanadu Quantum and the Photonics group of Raytheon’s Advanced Technology division.
Each team member brings specific capabilities, skills and knowledge needed for the project such as quantum sensor design, squeezing and sub-shot noise detection, quantum photonic testing and chip packaging and rapid prototyping of compact radio frequency-synthesizer modules. Work for the project is being performed at different sites, including Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Diego, California; College Park, Maryland and Toronto, Canada.
