Like every year, Santa needs to reach to every kid in Christmas and give them their presents. This year, a new challenge awaits Santa: He has to send the gifts digitally in order to adhere to social distancing! This is especially challenging because his secrecy is compromised using the classical digital communication channels…With the help of quantum technology, he has the chance to bring everyone their presents in a secure way!

To make this technology available to Santa and to all as well, engineers in TU/e designed a “sleigh” laser with a low linewidth and high spectral purity. Having these properties is critical in creating efficient quantum links. A photograph of the sleigh, fabricated by SMART Photonics, can be seen in the picture below. And Santa can ride on the sleigh too! Unfortunately, the presents will be tiny, because the sleigh is only 2 mm long.

Santa’s tiny, 2-mm long low-linewidth laser sleigh (InP PIC).