Science Alert October 25, 2022 As essential core technologies for optical fibre communication are approaching their limits of size, speed and energy-efficiency, there is a need for new technologies that offer further scaling of data transmission capacity. An international team of researchers (Denmark, Sweden, Japan) has shown that a single optical frequency-comb source based on a silicon nitride ring resonator supports data capacities in the petabit-per-second regime. They experimentally demonstrated transmission of 1.84 Pbit s–1 over a 37-core, 7.9-km-long fibre using 223 wavelength channels derived from a single microcomb ring resonator producing a stabilized dark-pulse Kerr frequency comb. They presented a theoretical […]
Tag Archives: Fiber optics
Flexible, easy-to-scale nanoribbons move graphene toward use in tech applications
Science Daily May 3, 2021 Silicon-based fiber optics are currently the best structures for high-speed, long distance transmissions, but graphene could improve performance even more. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin created a scalable fabrication technique to make the smallest graphene ribbon structures. They found that to improve graphene’s performance is to cut it into microscopic, nanometer-scale ribbon structures, which act as tiny antennas that interact with light. The smaller the antenna, the higher energies of light it interacts with. As the ribbon width decreases, so does the resonant wavelength of light. Lower wavelengths mean higher energies, and their devices interacted […]
International study reveals exceptional property of next generation optical fibers
EurekAlert February 15, 2021 The elastic backscattering of light in optical fiber is a fundamental phenomenon that sets the ultimate performance of several fiber systems such as gyroscopes and bidirectional transfer links. Until now, efforts to reduce the backscattering coefficient have yielded limited results. An international team of researchers (Canada, UK) measured backscattering from a low-loss antiresonant hollow-core fiber and showed that it is more than 40 dB below reported values in silica-core fiber and hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber. The record-low level of −118dB/m measured with their optical frequency-domain reflectometer is in good agreement with simulations in which they assumed […]