The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen RTX’s BBN Technologies to supply a prototype photonic chip as part of its Intensity Squeezed Photonic Integration with Revolutionary Detection (INSPIRED) programme.
The INSPIRED programme, introduced last year, aims to develop optoelectronic detectors that integrate squeezed-light techniques for sensitivity beyond the quantum shot-noise limit.
The latest move aims to develop next-generation, compact, low-power photonic sensors with enhanced precision. This chip employs quantum states of squeezed light to meet the goals of DARPA’s programme.
BBN Technologies is working on sensors that will offer users improved awareness of environmental elements critical to their missions.
Work is being conducted in Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Diego, California; College Park, Maryland; and Toronto, Canada.
The latest capability will have both defence and commercial applications, transforming fields such as LiDAR, biosensing, fibre-based sensing, system and network monitoring, navigation, and communications.
The prototype requires detection sensitivity 16dB below the ‘shot noise’ limit, which is a fundamental constraint on conventional sensors.
Squeezed light capabilities will be transferred to a fieldable, millimetre-scale detector for detection across a frequency range of 100MHz to 10GHz.
BBN quantum information scientist Dr Michael Grace said: “Our device minimises the photon noise by ‘squeezing’ the light source—suppressing certain kinds of quantum fluctuations while augmenting others.
“This lets us focus on extracting the information embedded in a specific photonic property of interest without being limited by shot noise.”
BBN will manage a team that includes experts from Xanadu Quantum, the University of Maryland, and Raytheon’s Advanced Technology business.
This team will focus on quantum sensor design, squeezing and sub-shot noise detection, quantum photonic testing and chip packaging, and rapid prototyping of compact RF-synthesiser modules.
In November 2024, RTX BBN Technologies secured a contract to enhance the US DARPA’s cyber resiliency programme.
The Compartmentalisation and Privilege Management programme aims to protect software systems by dividing them into secure compartments to prevent cyber breaches from escalating.
