| on 05 September 2025
Swabian Instruments participated in the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory (MQC) Entanglement 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, bringing together researchers across the Midwest quantum community to share quantum science and technology developments. This workshop brought together faculty and students from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Purdue to share the latest quantum entanglement and information science advances. We’re grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the event and engage in insightful conversations about entanglement characterization and quantum key distribution (QKD), as well as fluorescence lifetime measurements. This year, given that it is the year of quantum, we’re more excited than ever to push the boundaries of quantum science!
Swabian Instruments’ contribution included an oral presentation and poster focused on applications of Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) and recent experimental results, including:
Low picosecond timing jitter experiments in collaboration with Single Quantum Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors (SNSPDs).
Photon Number Resolution (PNR) through pulse-shape analysis with Quantum Opus SNSPDs at telecom wavelengths. Timestamping rising and falling edges with 1.4 ps RMS precision allows discrimination of multiphoton events from a single SNSPD, reducing the complexity and signal loss of multi-pixel splitting approaches.
Remote synchronization and syntonization for quantum networks. The last Time Tagger software feature merges timetag streams from remote nodes in real time, leveraging a syntonization signal (e.g., 10 MHz frequency) and a synchronization signal (e.g., 1 PPS). Using a PTP such as White Rabbit, sub-nanosecond accuracy and picosecond precision can be achieved.
Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) with high-throughput, picosecond resolution for confocal microscopy, enabling dynamic molecular mapping at photon-limited signal levels.
Scalable multichannel timing for Linear Optics Quantum Information (LOQI) experiments. Multi-channel Time Tagger systems with picosecond precision support complex interferometric circuits and correlation measurements required for photonic quantum computing.
Many insightful discussions took place at the poster session. A notable example was the fruitful discussion with Professor Tongcang (Tony) Li from Purdue University, who leverages Swabian Instruments’ Time Tagger Ultra and Pulse Streamer 8/2 in his work. At the MQC Entanglement workshop, he presented his group’s latest advances on generating quantum entanglement in a two-dimensional material at room temperature.
MQC Entanglement was a fruitful event in many aspects. It was a pleasure to share recent results on precise timestamping at MQC and to hear from experts in the field working on related challenges. The discussions highlighted the integration of time-correlated single-photon counting measurements in quantum technology research, such as quantum entanglement characterization, quantum networking, and quantum communication. Events like MQC provide an invaluable opportunity to exchange ideas on timing architectures, scalable data acquisition, and detector integration, and to see how these approaches are being applied across the Midwest quantum community.
Swabian Instruments is committed to contributing to these conversations and to supporting the progress of quantum research, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue at future meetings.
Quantum communication describes cutting-edge techniques to distribute information using the quantum properties of single photons. One of the most important applications is providing secure channels of communication using a technique known as quantum key distribution (QKD). Unlike classical public-key cryptography, which is susceptible to decryption by future quantum computing-based decryption algorithms, QKD offers unconditional security.
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Key breakthroughs in quantum networking, science, telecommunications, finance, and computing rely on precise synchronization of time measurements across multiple locations. Examples include quantum key distribution (QKD) and time verification, which involve event detection with very high fidelity time‐to‐digital conversion (time tagging) at different sites many kilometers apart, sharing a common time base (synchronization).
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