{"id":630885,"date":"2026-10-15T01:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T01:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630885\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T01:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T01:02:08","slug":"new-zealand-breaks-new-ground-in-field-of-photonics-quantum-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630885\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand breaks new ground in field of photonics, quantum technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand continues to break new ground in the field of photonics and quantum technology<\/a>, but is still failing to keep pace with global peers.<\/p>\n

Latest University of Auckland research may help the world to miniaturise the laser tools used for ultra-precise measurements, such as atomic clocks.<\/p>\n

Department of Physics head and researcher at the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, Professor Miro Erkintalo, began exploring a potential new way to generate ultra-small microchip-sized frequency combs used for measuring the frequency – or colours – of light.<\/p>\n

Sometimes called `light rulers’ or ‘rainbow rulers’, these miniaturised frequency combs unlock a host of leading edge applications.<\/p>\n

Future uses include sensors capable of detecting extremely small changes in their environments.<\/p>\n

However, a recent industry raised concerns about the underfunding of photonic and quantum industries in Australia and New Zealand, which were growing, but at a lower rate than the global average.<\/p>\n

“New Zealand has some excellent start-ups, a new stakeholder community and significant research potential, but it’s clear, after decades of investment in Australia, ‘the Ditch’ is becoming a digital divide,” the report by the Australian and New Zealand Optical Society says.<\/p>\n

Erkintalo said New Zealand’s blue sky science projects were the first step towards the commercialisation of leading edge applications, such as the frequency comb.<\/p>\n

“I was able to do that research and that’s really what led us to where we are now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This work is the culmination of several years of work, involving a fantastic international collaboration that brings together the world-leading knowledge and innovation of New Zealand researchers with equally world-leading folks in the US.”<\/p>\n

However, such blue sky science funding was at risk.<\/p>\n

While the New Zealand government is committed to funding AI and quantum technologies<\/a>, the funding is expected to be being directed to the commercialisation of products.<\/p>\n

However, Erkintalo said the invention of the new type of frequency comb would not have been possible without the underlying knowledge, developed over a decade.<\/p>\n

He said Dodd-Walls was internationally recognised for its advanced scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n

“We are absolutely world-leading in the physical understanding and the knowledge of how this system works,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think having this very deep knowledge makes our group quite attractive for international collaborators that do have the access to resources that are more sophisticated.”<\/p>\n

The frequency comb was the result of a collaboration between the Auckland researchers and Gr\u00e9gory Moille and Kartik Srinivasan from the University of Maryland and the US National Institute of Science and Technology.<\/p>\n

Erkintalo, Moille and Srinivasan’s work was reported in the prestigious journal Nature. The group had also submitted a provisional patent application based on aspects of the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand continues to break new ground in the field of photonics and quantum technology, but is still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[111,139,69,393,147],"class_list":["post-630885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}