ColdQuanta will collaborate with Vescent to design, develop, and deliver a new generation of high-performance atomic clocks that are suitable for field deployment and have a high Technology Readiness Level as part of the CROC program (TRL). The effort will produce ten field-deployable optical clocks with a TRL of 6 or above that have a long-term stability of fewer than three parts in 100 trillion and a power consumption decrease of more than 50%.
ColdQuanta will collaborate with Vescent, which will deliver optical frequency comb technology, and NIST’s Octave Photonics and Quantum Nanophotonics Group, which will provide non-linear nanophotonics breakthroughs. To improve stability and performance, the program will investigate a two-photon optical clock transition in a heated vapor of rubidium (Rb) atoms. The clocks will also be smaller, lighter, and more efficient in terms of power use.
The physics package for the Compact Rubidium Optical Clock (CROC) program, with input from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Atomic Devices and Instrumentation Group (NIST) will also be provided by ColdQuanta. This initiative began in November 2021 and will last for three years, ending in 2026.
ColdQuanta is pleased to work alongside our partners to advance innovation for critical defense technologies used by the U.S. Navy, the CROC program demonstrates how ColdQuanta’s technology is evolving as the enabler of a broad ecosystem around quantum. By bringing all of the critical elements together, we can more rapidly bring the benefits of quantum technology to the world.”
Chester Kennedy, President, Research and Security Solutions at ColdQuanta
The CROC program will have three phases: the first phase will be the advancement of all critical technology elements to TRL 6 and demonstrate in a modular clock. The second phase will be integration of the individual components into prototype clocks through engineering and verification stage. The last phase will be the manufacturing of the ten final prototypes for ONR evaluation.
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