Phys.org March 1, 2023 To overcome the barriers to light propagation for free-space optical communication (FSO) a team of researchers in the US (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Michigan) proposed making use of the acoustic properties of a laser filament coupled together with a donut-shaped signal beam. A filament generated by an ultrafast laser was accompanied by an acoustic wave that clears a cylindrical chamber around the filament’s plasma column that can mimic a transmission channel. They presented a method to couple a Laguerre–Gauss beam through the obstacle-free channel. They imaged and measured the transmitted signal carried by the structured […]