Groundbreaking new
technology could allow 100-times-faster internet by harnessing twisted light
beams to carry more data and process it faster. Broadband fiber-optics carry
information on pulses of light, at the speed of light, through optical fibers.
But the way the light is encoded at one end and processed at the other affects
data speeds.
This world-first
nanophotonic device, just unveiled in Nature Communications,
encodes more data and processes it much faster than conventional fiber optics
by using a special form of 'twisted' light.New broadband
technologies under development use the oscillation, or shape, of light waves to
encode data, increasing bandwidth by also making use of the light we cannot
see.
This latest technology, at the cutting edge of optical communications,
carries data on light waves that have been twisted into a spiral to increase
their capacity further still. This is known as light in a state of orbital
angular momentum, or OAM.
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