Original title: Heterogeneously Integrated Efficient and Widely Tunable Lasers at 795 nm for Rubidium-Based Quantum Technologies
Max Kiewiet, Stijn Cuyvers, Tom Reep, Konstantinos Akritidis +7 · September 2026
Quantum computers and optical atomic clocks use lasers to control rubidium atoms, but these optical systems are too big, heavy, power-hungry, and costly. Shrinking these lasers onto tiny chips is difficult because light does not transfer easily between materials and the setups trap heat. To fix this, researchers placed microscopic gallium arsenide light amplifiers inside tiny etched pockets on a chip. They lined them up directly edge-to-edge with silicon nitride light channels, called waveguides. This design produced single-mode lasers with steady light. One compact version reached over 22 mW of on-chip power, a 9.4% electrical-to-optical efficiency, and a very pure light tone with a 3 kHz linewidth. Another version can shift across 9 nm, offering wide tuning to replace bulky laboratory lasers.
Imagine putting a bright LED into a small flashlight without touching the lens. If the LED is off-center by a hair, the beam comes out weak or crooked. Adjusting it often makes matters worse because you can't see inside. In this paper the LED is a laser amplifier, the flashlight body is a silicon chip, and the lens is a microscopic glass channel. The researchers place the amplifier directly against the channel so light goes straight in without loss.
Quantum computers and atomic clocks rely on bulky, costly lasers. This new method puts high-performance lasers on a chip with record power and tuning, which could make these technologies portable and affordable. That would move them from lab benches into practical devices.
The abstract doesn't state whether these lasers were tested in a working quantum processor or clock, nor does it discuss long-term reliability. It also only reports performance for a single wavelength band, so wider applicability isn't shown.
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Heterogeneously Integrated Efficient and Widely Tunable Lasers at 795 nm for Rubidium-Based Quantum Technologies — Max Kiewiet, Stijn Cuyvers, Tom Reep et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.