Twisted light could let you download 70 DVDs per second

An international team of researchers has developed a method of manipulating beams of to transmit information at astonishing speeds.

Twisted light beams have opened the door for wireless communication 85,000 times faster than broadband Internet speeds. The breakthrough could allow NASA missions or military space satellites to exchange data at ultrahigh speeds.

Lab tests have shown how twisted laser beams can transmit data at speeds up to 2.56 terabits per second — roughly the equivalent of beaming 70 DVDs worth of data in a single second through free space. Such speed easily put broadband Internet's 30 megabits per second to shame.

"We didn't invent the twisting of light, but we took the concept and ramped it up to a terabit-per-second," said Alan Willner, electrical engineering professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The international team hailing from the U.S., China, Pakistan and Israel used beam-twisting "phase holograms" that are able to twist light beams into a helical shape similar to that of DNA. Each beam's individual twist can effectively create the equivalent of a new data stream channel — similar to a radio having separate channels — without the need for more bandwidth.

The lab test beamed the data across open space rather than through fiber-optic cables, so that researchers could simulate space communication between satellites. Such testing had funding from the U.S. military's Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its "Information in a Photon" program. [Secret Codes Ready to Take Quantum Leap in Space]

The twisted light concept remains limited to deep space missions or near-Earth satellite communication because of the Earth's atmospheric interference, but the technology of adaptive optics can help offset such interference to some degree. Such free-space beaming could also work over short distances on Earth.

But the concept could someday also boost data speeds over fiber-optic cables — Boston University researchers have already tested the method in a fiber ring stretching 0.6 miles (1 kilometer).

Jian Wang, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, was lead author on the new research paper detailed in the June 24 issue of the journal Nature Photonics.

Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 InnovationNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Twisted light could let you download 70 DVDs per second
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0625/Twisted-light-could-let-you-download-70-DVDs-per-second
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe