"New research by optical fiber experts at Boston University and University of Southern California created a new kind of optical fiber stable enough to transmit donut-shaped laser beams called optical vortices, also known as orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams. OAM beams are generating interest not only in communications, but also atom manipulation and optical tweezers. Ramachandran’s OAM fiber had four modes (an optical fiber typically has two), and he and Willner showed that for each OAM mode, they could transmit 400 Gb/s in just a single wavelength of light — or 1.6 Tb/s across 10 wavelengths — over the course of 0.68 miles (1.1 km). In related work last year, the researchers reported in Nature Photonics that OAM encoding could be used to send 2.5 Tb/s of data (about five Blu-ray discs) through free space. That method didn’t work, however, when it was tried in a standard optical fiber."
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 05:25:59 +0000
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