Cold atom-based quantum sensors and clocks will revolutionise many applications such as Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) technologies by increasing the resilience against attacks/outages and improving Space Situational Awareness (SSA) -- critical to protecting and future-proofing national security, financial and technological infrastructure and capabilities. Commercial uptake, market penetration and commercialisation of next-generation quantum systems is currently limited by the lack of robust, reliable and low size, weight and power consumption (SWaP) lasers and laser systems that lie at the heart of quantum technologies. TALENT brings together a consortium of UK companies to develop innovative robust, reliable and low-SWaP lasers to enable the deployment of quantum technologies in harsh and dynamic environments - opening new markets and opportunities. TALENT will produce lasers with an unprecedented combination of performance, reliability, SWaP and ease of integration to break the barriers to commercialisation of next-generation PNT. The consortium's expertise in laser development, miniaturisation and precision alignment will ensure reliability and SWaP are improved to market-readiness. New, substantial commercial opportunities have been identified that require reliable and robust operation in quantum sensing and clocks for next-generation quantum-enhanced PNT and SSA technologies.

SOURCE is a feasibility study and proof-of-concept for the potential scale up of an open access, system in package, advanced packaging platform in the UK. The platform targets heterogeneous integration of multiple semiconductor chip types within the same encapsulated package, achieving reduced size and weight while enabling increased device functionality and performance. Alter UK's assembly capabilities will be reviewed, and a demonstrator package will be produced as part of this study. Assembly design rules will be produced to guide future customers designs into this platform. Rydon Technology will perform a study on relevant materials, suppliers, and software to enable the IC substrate procurement. A market study will be conducted to introduce the capability to customers and scope out the scale up to volume production.

Cold atom based quantum technologies have great potential because of the versatility of this platform. Cold atoms can be used in optical clocks, inertial sensors, gravimeters, and magnetometers just to name a few. They rely on stable and agile lasers with stringent requirements on their optical frequency. Current commercially available lasers are bulky, expensive and struggle to meet these requirements without significant development effort from the user. This limits many quantum technologies to the laboratory. To address these challenges, the Dual-FISH project will develop a versatile, compact and easy-to-use laser solution for cold atom systems, particularly commercial atom clocks. In this project the consortium will produce a single device that provides both optical frequencies (the so-called "cooling" and "repump") required for the operation of cold atom traps in a single optical fibre. We will exploit mature, efficient 780 nm diode laser technology and combine advanced spectroscopy and offset locking schemes with mature packaging capability and compact, powerful bespoke electronics. This innovative approach will allow us to produce a complete laser system that is small (approximately 120x80x50 mm) and ready to use by system integrators intending to commercialise quantum technologies based on cold atom technology, while providing agile laser light without any need for third-party stabilisation hardware.

Silicon photonics is a growing area of photonics and is finding applications in markets such as telecommuncations, datacommunications, Space, Military and Bio-Photonics/Medical. The current fibre align approaches have limitations in size and reliability. The study will explore a new method of fibre alignment which will provide benefits in size and reliability and will open up new high reliability applications.

The possibility to exchange a cryptographic key secured by the laws of quantum physics is rapidly leaving the academic laboratories and entering our everyday life, with commercial devices currently available. These, typically, rely on the propagation of quantum states of light in dedicated optical fibres. However, the unavoidable fibre loss is limiting the maximum distance achievable to roughly a hundred miles. This limitation could be overcome by exploiting satellite quantum communication. Different governments and funding agencies, such as China and the European Space Agency, are currently investigating this possibility. The main component for satellite quantum communication is the source of quantum light. In this project, we want to evaluate the feasibility of a commercial product for the generation of the necessary quantum states of light able to be deployed on a satellite. By combining Optocap's expertise in the packaging of optical components for space applications and Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics know-how in quantum technologies, we aim at defining the route towards the first commercialisation of a source of entangled photons for satellite quantum communication.