Researchers turn optical data into readable sound waves
University of Sydney team have slowed digital information carried as light waves by transferring the data into sound waves in a photonic integrated circuit.
Researchers at the University of Sydney have dramatically slowed digital information carried as light waves by transferring the data into sound waves in a photonic integrated circuit. The research was published in Nature Communications.
"The information in our chip in acoustic form travels at a velocity five orders of magnitude slower than in the optical domain," said Birgit Stiller, research fellow at the University of Sydney and supervisor of the project. This delay allows for the data to be briefly stored and managed inside the chip for processing, retrieval and further transmission as light waves.
Lead authors Moritz Merklein and Stiller (pictured above) are from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS). Their chip was fabricated at the Australian National University's Laser Physics Centre, also part of the CUDOS Centre of Excellence.
Improved control
University of Sydney doctoral candidate Merklein said: "Building an acoustic buffer inside a chip improves our ability to control information by several orders of magnitude."
Stiller said: "Our system is not limited to a narrow bandwidth. So unlike previous systems this allows us to store and retrieve information at multiple wavelengths simultaneously, vastly increasing the efficiency of the device."
CUDOS director, ARC Laureate Fellow and co-author, Benjamin Eggleton, said: "This is an important step forward in the field of optical information processing as this concept fulfils all requirements for current and future generation optical communication systems."
The Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) is an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence, headquartered at the University of Sydney, and a research consortium between six Australian universities throughout NSW, the ACT and Victoria. The work is supported by Eggleton's ARC Laureate Fellowship.
