Princeton Lightwave Licenses IBM Single-Photon Detection Technology

Princeton Lightwave has licensed IBM's single-photon detection (SPD) technology. An SPD is an essential component of quantum cryptography systems, which enable extremely secure communications even in the presence of eavesdropping. Quantum cryptography systems are being developed for government and financial institutions and are expected to find widespread use. Single-photon detectors are also useful in a variety of optical and semiconductor test and measurement applications and in some areas of scientific research.


The IBM SPD technology was developed at its Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. with partial funding by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST) program. SPD units produced by IBM have been deployed successfully by QuIST participants in a prototype metro-area network.


Princeton Lightwave plans to continue development of the SPD technology by combining it with a recently announced InGaAs/InP avalanche photodiode (APD) that has been specifically optimized for single-photon counting performance. The company said that by integrating this photodetector with the IBM technology, it will be able to provide customers with a high-performance solution for their single-photon counting applications.

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