Via the Rochester Business Journal
In the race to build revolutionary quantum computers, ultra-precise sensors, and secure communication networks, most of the spotlight shines on the microchips themselves. Yet behind the scenes, tech companies face a major hardware hurdle that has little to do with computing chips and everything to do with light: lasers.
To manipulate quantum systems, engineers rely on highly specialized lasers to control microscopic particles. Most often, this requires bulky, expensive specialty laser instruments that take up entire optical tables and need constant manual alignment. In short, quantum companies are being asked to build future commercial industries using laser technology originally designed for individual laboratory experiments.
From Stanford research to a microchip breakthrough
Brightlight Photonics was founded to eliminate this hardware bottleneck. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the startup’s roots trace back to Stanford University, where co-founder and CEO Joshua Yang, PhD, was building quantum systems using synthetic diamond and silicon carbide.
While the quantum hardware itself was shrinking down to the size of a fingernail, the Titanium:sapphire (Ti:sapphire) lasers driving Yang’s experiments remained massive tabletop systems. Widely regarded across optical physics as the gold standard for high-performance lasers, these systems offer broad color tuning, extreme power, and ultra-low noise. They can also produce very short pulses of light, on the order of quadrillionths of a second across a wide range of wavelengths, making them especially useful for demanding experiments in quantum optics, including work with spin qubits, one approach to building quantum information systems. But their table size, cost, and fragility made them nearly impossible to deploy outside a research environment.
“Ti:sapphire setups delivered incredible performance, but they were difficult to scale, required constant alignment, and the lasers were prone to breaking. There could be many months when you’d have downtime just because your laser wasn’t working,” recalls Yang. “Those challenges led us to a simple question: If we can make the quantum hardware the size of a chip, why can’t we make the laser source chip size, too?”
The team found their answer when they successfully demonstrated a Ti:sapphire laser integrated directly onto a microscopic photonic chip — using the same kinds of fabrication techniques found in advanced microelectronics. After the breakthrough was published in the prestigious journal Nature, an Activate Fellowship and private and public investment followed, including non-dilutive funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Army. This momentum gave Brightlight the ability to transition from a university research project into a formal company.
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