Takeaways from SPW Edinburgh
The Single Photon Workshop (SPW) is the largest conference in the world dedicated to single-photon generation, single-photon detection, single-photon metrology and single-photon applications. This year’s 11th edition in Edinburgh brought together the vibrant community of researchers and industry experts. IDQ was thrilled and proud to contribute to both the scientific track and to the technical exhibition.
From this edition, we’re happy to share the following takeaways with you:
- The single-photon community is in full swing, with well established institutions and growing industrial field. Useful and emerging applications range from deep-space optical communications to healthcare with incredible advances in imaging the living.
- In the rapidly evolving and exciting field of SNSPDs, three topics were featured prominently, namely detection in the mid-IR (beyond 2 μm, and even up to 29 μm), with applications in imaging, gas sensing and Lidar. Another one was deep-space optical communication, where SNSPDs are ultimately expected enable high-speed optical downlinks from Mars. Finally, the latest development on photon-number resolving SNSPDs with various approaches to enable photonic quantum processors were presented and generated lots of great discussions.
- Recent developments in the field of single-photon sources featured prominently in the workshop, a sign that this field has been growing and producing amazing results in the last few years. Quantum dots had the biggest presence overall, and are already making an impact in small-scale quantum processors. This, combined with PICs and PNRs can lead to unprecedented computing power.
IDQ at SPW
IDQ’s presence was marked by two product releases. On the Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detector (SNSPD) side, the rack-mounted ID281 Pro detector was presented, delivering the high performance our customer’s have come to expect from IDQ in an form factor made for modulator quantum systems. On the Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) side, we revealed the new ID Qube ULN (Ultra Low Noise), a NIR-telecom-SPAD re-designed to reach industry leading low dark count rates below 200 Hz. The Quantum Detection Systems division of IDQ is pushing the envelope with a product range aimed at increased performance in plug-and-play formats.
Mark Niklès, our CRO gave a compelling keynote speech showing where IDQ is going with long distance commercial Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems and collaborations with the Quantum Computing community. Our colleague Lorenzo Stasi, R&D Scientist had the privilege to present our latest generation of 28-pixel photon-number-resolving SNSPDs. We are very proud of this work and of Lorenzo’s contribution in particular, as this paves the way towards a unique technology that enables photonic quantum processor already. You can have access to his presentation here.
We are grateful for Professors Gerald Buller of Heriot-Watt University and Professor Robert Hadfield of University of Glasgow for having welcomed us and organized such an incredible event. The level of interest around our team was inspiring and we collected incredible insights, feedback from customers and new challenges to tackle!
