Space-Ready Chip-Integrated Titanium:Sapphire Lasers

Brightlight Photonics is developing a universal nanophotonic laser, amplifier, modulator, and integrated frequency comb solution in the wavelength ranges 350 - 450 nm and 700 - 1000 nm for quantum technologies including optical atomic clocks, cold atom interferometers, and solid-state quantum sensors. The wavelength range 700 - 1000 nm is addressed by a single, wideband Titanium:Sapphire (Ti:Sapphire) gain medium, patterned into waveguides on a nanophotonic chip to form amplifiers and lasers. We propose to extend the platform’s capabilities through hybrid integration with thin-film lithium niobate for frequency-doubling to 350 - 450 nm and electro-optic modulation, as well as passive sapphire for frequency comb generation. One of the major impediments to compactifying quantum sensing and control technologies is their common reliance on bulky, expensive photonics–chip-integration of high-performance lasers below 1 micron wavelength has been an outstanding challenge. Our on-chip sources, amplifiers, and frequency combs could enable single-chip photonic generation and readout for optical atomic clocks–reducing payloads for deep-space navigation, explorations of dark matter, gravitational waves, and next-generation gravimeters, as well as our target commercial market: deployable optical atomic clocks for GPS-agnostic navigation. Our on-chip lasers and modulators could create unprecedented low-SWaP-C cold atom control at a wide range of wavelengths for next generation inertial sensors and the commercial quantum processor market. In Phase I we demonstrated a widely-tunable, narrow linewidth Ti:Sapphire laser and simulated watt-level amplification. For Phase II we have assembled nanophotonic leaders at Harvard with the commercialization, ruggedization, and miniaturization expertise at Vescent to expand the addressable on-chip range to the frequency-doubled regime as well as demonstrate integrated self-injection locked lasers, amplifiers, frequency combs, and modulators.

It has proven difficult to operationalize let alone commercialize many quantum technologies due to their SWaP-C; it is a major challenge to shrink experiments that span optical tables into form factors that can be deployed on ships, planes, and satellites. Integrated light sources are a major limiting factor in this effort, critical to a wide array of NASA needs. Deep-space navigation using optical atomic clocks: historically, spacecraft need two-way communication with terrestrial clocks for accurate position determination. With round-trip communication times to Mars taking tens of minutes, this leads to an untenable delay. Embedding atomic clocks in satellites eliminates a degree of freedom in the kinematic equations and enables real-time determination of spacecraft position. Fundamental physics: sending optical atomic clocks to orbit mitigates tidal and gravitational noise, enabling tests of general relativity. Atomic clocks can also be used to understand the coupling of dark matter to standard model fields and particles and for gravitational wave detection. Cold-atom interferometers (CAIs): CAIs have the potential to enable new sensing modalities. Similar to atomic clocks, CAIs could prove pivotal to inertial navigation. CAI gyroscopes are projected to attain 3-order of magnitude improvement over currently deployed technologies, and the systems are further beneficial for space applications due to their projected lifetimes. Similar principles can be used to attain next-generation gravimeters to replace the GRACE FO mission, as outlined in the NASA decadal strategy. These CAI systems currently rely on table-sized optics packages to cool, trap, and control atoms–a major impediment to low-SWaP, deployable systems. In addition to the unprecedented low-SWaP-C of our platform, the wide-band integrated device provides an inherently rugged solution for launch that requires minimal design modifications across missions. Accurate timekeeping is important for a wide array of commercial sectors ranging from synchronizing power grids to timestamping financial transactions. A critical need for low SWaP-C, mass-producible atomic clocks comes from the position, navigation, and timing (PNT) sector. Our economy and military is dependent on the ability to precisely determine one's position, typically accomplished through GPS. The threat of GPS-denied environments in any conflict with a near-peer adversary drives the need for alternative navigation systems. Non-GPS triangulation-based timing systems critically rely on their time source-a robust, low SWaP-C optical atomic clock is a limiting factor to deploying these GPS-agnostic systems. To attain high-precision measurements, a new generation of clocks based on optical and IR transitions needs to be deployed–the current record form factor is 35L. An integrated Ti:Sapphire laser can substitute for the continuous-wave components of these systems while our on-chip frequency combs will enable a chip-based optics package–one of our first potential products. Additionally, high performance lasers are at the heart of cold atom quantum processors. Companies building cold atom quantum computers have raised over $200 million, and cold atom processors recently surpassed the published world record logical qubit count by over an order-of-magnitude. Reducing the optical setups’ complexity through integrated lasers would enable larger qubit counts with less degrees of freedom to couple to noise. We plan to initially work with the Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) to demonstrate feasibility. The continuous-wave Ti:Sapphire sources in this proposal are a stepping stone to future on-chip pulsed Ti:Sapphire development. These pulsed lasers could be used for THz generation, two-photon microscopy, and optical coherence tomography, with use cases in academic labs as well as for ophthalmic surgery, skin non-invasive biopsies, and cancer detection.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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