Grants and Contributions

Acquisition of equipment and marketing strategy: The project aims to improve productivity and production capacity and to diversify the markets of a company specializing in designing and manufacturing optical research instruments and equipment.

Canada UK Commercialising Quantum Technology Programme: CR&D
Covesion (UK) as partner and Few-Cycle (Canada) as lead.

Quantum states of light with a macroscopic number of photons, generally referred to as squeezed light, are entangled fields underpinning quantum metrology (imaging, spectroscopy and interferometry), secure communication (key exchange and authentication), and quantum computing. Short, squeezed pulses are an asset for the emerging field of quantum spectroscopy and microscopy and are required to perform measurement of ultrafast transient effects with sensitivities exceeding those available with
classical means. However, generating broadband squeezed states of light with coherence times less than 100 fs, in a single temporal mode, is challenging. This project aims at generating such states with the novel concept of Fourier plane Optical Parametric Amplification, a technology patented by the firm (Few-Cycle).

This project aims to manifest and expand the company's leadership in Hollow-core fiber (HCF) pulse compression of femtosecond laser pulses performance by upscaling pulse power and pulse quality.

NRC's Security and Disruptive Technologies (SDT) research center hosts research in the field of strong optical interactions with materials and nanostructures, with applications towards improved sensing. High-intensity femtosecond lasers are required to reach the high-field regime of light-solid interaction. Because NRC utilizes materials with widely different properties and with various length scales (nanoscopic to macroscopic), the laser system must efficiently deliver a unique combination of intense and weak fields over a wide spectral range, from deep-ultraviolet to mid-infrared frequencies, at high repetition rate (100 kHz), and with short pulses. The high repetition rate assures the high-field response of small nano- and atomic-scale materials can be adequately measured; the wide spectral coverage enables pumping and probing of material-specific resonances.

In this challenge, NRC is seeking a femtosecond laser system that operates at a repetition rate of 100 kHz and that, starting from a pump laser with a center wavelength of 1.03 μm and pulse duration of 200 femtoseconds (fs), delivers a minimum of three laser outputs with pulse durations < 100 femtoseconds over wavelengths ranging from the deep-ultraviolet (450 nm) to the far infrared (10 μm). To ensure a sufficiently high intensity can be reached on the solid target, NRC requires μJ-level pulse energies for wavelengths longer than 1 μm.

Eurostars E12925-Twyster Austria : Replace current TiSa laser technology through better performance, value and reliability with Yb laser systems combined with subsequent pulse compression.