The technology center ALPhANOV and start’up company MuQuans have signed a technology transfer agreement on a fiber laser emitting at 780 nm. With this agreement, MuQuans will have its own capacity to produce these lasers initially developed by ALPhANOV’s Research team.
Talence – October 15th, 2014. ALPhANOV, the optics and lasers technology center of the Route des Lasers cluster and MuQuans, a start-up company specialized in high precision instruments based on cold atom technology, have just announced an agreement for technology transfer.
This agreement concerns fiber laser sources emitting at 780 nm, developed by ALPhANOV’s R&D. With this transfer, MuQuans can now manufacture these lasers used to cool a cloud of atoms trapped in a vacuum chamber to a temperature close to absolute zero. It is on this principle of quantum physics that MuQuans developed a range of high-tech instruments capable of measuring gravity with extreme precision or provide time references with unrivaled stability and accuracy.
This technology transfer allows MuQuans to accelerate the launch of its products and ALPhANOV to fulfill its role in supporting photonics start-ups and in developing industrial activity of the Route des Lasers cluster.
For Benoit Appert-Collin, Director of ALPhANOV, which has accompanied MuQuans since its creation in 2011, "this technology transfer is the result of strong collaboration and coaching since MuQuans’ creation in 2011. It fully reflects ALPhANOV’s mission to support entrepreneurship in the field of photonics."
And for Bruno Desruelle, President of MuQuans "skills and resources provided by ALPhANOV were essential to enable the company to progress in the development and industrialization of laser technologies necessary for our instruments. It’s clear that our progress would have been slower without this collaboration. This transfer will allow us to internalize an expertise that is critical for our business."
ALPhANOV and MuQuans are also teaming up on other collaborative projects: Graviter, funded by the DGA, to develop a field quantum gravimeter and MIGA, a project on the detection of gravitational waves by matter waves.
About ALPhANOV
Established in 2007, ALPhANOV is the optics and lasers technology center of the Route des Lasers cluster. It acts as a technology transfer accelerator and uses its expertise and know-how to serve innovative projects with industrial target short and mid-terms. It offers multiple modes of action which enable it to act all along the value chain. Its fields of expertise include laser processes and micromachining, laser sources and fiber components, laser and optical systems and health applications of photonics. www.alphanov.com.
About MuQuans
MuQuans proposes a new generation of ultra-high performance measurement instruments based on a unique and patented technology, which relies on the utilization of laser cooling, trapping and manipulation of neutral atoms: an absolute quantum gravimeter capable of measuring gravity with a relative accuracy of 10-9, dedicated to various geophysics applications; an atomic clock which provides a time reference signal offering relative stability and accuracy close to 10-15 and dedicated to time metrology applications. MuQuans is a spin-off from Institut d’Optique Graduate School and Observatoire de Paris. www.muquans.com.
