Impact
The all-optical nature and extreme precision of our light-based time signal opens unique opportunities for many industries and use cases, including data centers, navigation, aviation / aerospace, telecommunications, high performance computing, AI, integration to various optical solutions, and many more. TIMEKEEPER will enable all-optical technology to measure time intervals at the femtosecond scale, limiting the use of expensive electronic components and minimizing drift.
Technical background
Accurate time interval measurements and synchronization between two or more pulses are highly desirable in different fields of science and technology. Electronic components-based approaches such as time-to-digital converter (TDC) cannot precisely measure the time difference between two events precisely below two-digit picosecond scale. In addition, high-speed electronics and electronic interpolation induce large drift over long times. To overcome these limitations, we must move forward from electrical interpolation to all-optical time interpolation.
Goal
Our goal is to achieve the higher time precession at the femtosecond (fs) scale and even attosecond (as) along with minimized drift for future applications in large-scale networks and navigation. We also aim to realize all-optical time-to-frequency converters and optical switches that can be used to realize low-cost, high-resolution time-interval counters and optical gates.
Funding
We thank Business Finland for the Research to Business (R2B) grant, and the European Research Council for the Proof of Concept grant.
Team members, partners and steering group members
The steering group composition will be announced shortly
The science team consists of Dr. Rakesh Dhama, MSc. Imran Hosein and Professor Humeyra Caglayan.
The commercialisation team includes Juho Rissanen, Samia Dehkal and Mikko Pitkänen.
Origins
Our origin is in the robust scientific research of the aQUARiUM project (2019-2024) at Tampere University, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and a Proof-of-Concept grant from ERC (2023). We are being supported by Business Finland’s Research to Business (R2B) program since 2025. Propellerhat Management and BrainStormCorner were involved in co-creating and planning of the project since the ERC Proof of Concept stage.