Information in today's digital world is often sent through light beams in optic cables. As we need to send more data, finding new ways to pack information into light is crucial. Researchers at Aalto University have developed a new way to do this by creating light vortices, which are like tiny, controlled hurricanes of light that can carry data.
Light vortices are beams where the center is dark, surrounded by a bright ring of light. This happens because the electric field of the light points in different directions, much like winds in a hurricane. The researchers used metal nanoparticles that interact with an electric field.
A paper published in Nature Communications describes the methods and results of this study.
The researchers arranged 100,000 metallic nanoparticles in a complex pattern called a quasicrystal. Quasicrystals are patterns that are not perfectly ordered like a grid but also not entirely random, sitting somewhere between order and chaos.
The trick was to place these particles in areas where the electric field was weakest. By doing this, they could isolate and enhance the parts of the light field they wanted to use for creating special vortices.
Potential for delivering more information through fiber cables
This method could revolutionize how we send information through light. For instance, by sending these light vortices through fiber optic cables, one could potentially fit more data into the same space compared to current methods.
"We could, for example, send these vortices down optic fibre cables and unpack them at the destination," says researcher Kristian Arjas in a press release issued by Aalto University. "This would allow us to store our information into a much smaller space and transmit much more information at once. An optimistic guess for how much would be 8 to 16 times the information we can now deliver over optic fibre."
However, turning this discovery into something usable in everyday technology might still take some years because it needs a lot more engineering work.