Jacob Aron Nothing is a bro, I can't wait to try this myself. On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Eugen Leitl <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23309-information-superhighway-approaches-light-speed.html > > Information superhighway approaches light speed > > 18:00 24 March 2013 by Jacob Aron Nothing moves faster than light in a > vacuum, but large volumes of data can now travel at 99.7 per cent of this > ultimate speed limit. > > In glass optical fibres, light travels 31 per cent slower than in a vacuum. > Hollowing them out so that most of the light travels through air speeds > things up. But these hollow fibres are a poor replacement as light scatters > at the glass-air interface, limiting the number of wavelengths, and > therefore > the volume of data, transmitted at once. > > Now Francesco Poletti and colleagues at the University of Southampton, UK, > have made fibres with an ultra-thin glass rim, enabling a much wider band > of > wavelengths to travel at high speed at once. The team's record is a 73.7 > terabit per second transmission over 310 metres, a 15,000-fold increase > over > ordinary hollow fibres. > > "Previous fibres either have higher bandwidth but high loss, or lower loss > but narrower bandwidth," says Poletti. "We've achieved both in the same > fibre." > > Journal reference: Nature Photonics, DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.45 > > > http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.45.html > > Towards high-capacity fibre-optic communications at the speed of light in > vacuum > > F. Poletti, N. V. Wheeler, M. N. Petrovich, N. Baddela, E. > Numkam Fokoua, J. R. Hayes, D. R. Gray, Z. Li, R. Slavík & > D. > J. Richardson Nature Photonics (2013) doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.45 > > Received 13 September 2012 Accepted 08 February 2013 Published online 24 > March 2013 > > Abstract > > Wide-bandwidth signal transmission with low latency is emerging as a key > requirement in a number of applications, including the development of > future > exaflop-scale supercomputers, financial algorithmic trading and cloud > computing1, 2, 3. Optical fibres provide unsurpassed transmission > bandwidth, > but light propagates 31% slower in a silica glass fibre than in vacuum, > thus > compromising latency. Air guidance in hollow-core fibres can reduce fibre > latency very significantly. However, state-of-the-art technology cannot > achieve the combined values of loss, bandwidth and mode-coupling > characteristics required for high-capacity data transmission. Here, we > report > a fundamentally improved hollow-core photonic-bandgap fibre that provides a > record combination of low loss (3.5 dB km−1) and wide bandwidth (160 nm), > and > use it to transmit 37 × 40 Gbit s−1 channels at a 1.54 µs km−1 faster speed > than in a conventional fibre. This represents the first experimental > demonstration of fibre-based wavelength division multiplexed data > transmission at close to (99.7%) the speed of light in vacuum. > >
