Caltech engineers have developed an optical switch that can significantly be helpful in the world of computing, as reported by PhysOrg.
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390895 02: Insulated fiber-optic cable from the Fiberoptic Supply Company is on display June 20, 2001 in Denver, CO.
The engineers used optical with the aim to achieve ultrafast all-optical signal processing and computing.
Why Optical?
Optical devices can transmit signals faster compared to electrical devices. This is because optical devices use pulses of light instead of electrical signals.
Optics can revolutionize computing because it can do more with less power. However, a major limitation of optics-based systems is that they will reach a point where they will need electronics-based transistors for more efficient data processing.
The Optical Switch
Caltech engineers used a crystalline material, also known as lithium niobate, which is essential to the field of optics. It is nonlinear because of how the atoms are arranged in the crystal-the optical signals that it produces are not proportional to the input signals.
The team at Caltech also confined the light temporarily. The team of engineers reduced the light duration and used a particular design to keep the pulses short as they propagated through the device. In turn, this resulted in each pulse with higher peak power.
With spatiotemporal confinement of light, it has helped enhance the strength of nonlinearity for given pulse energy. Therefore, this means the photons now affect each other more strongly.
The result creates nonlinear splitter in which the light pulses are routed to two different outputs based on their energies. Therefore, this allows switching to occur in less than femtoseconds.
Optics in Computing
Computing relies on signals, and electrical signals can easily be transferred. However, optical signals are tricky and will require electronic transistors. With the invention of this optical switch, the dependence on electronics is minimized, especially with the increasing number of cores.
The optical switch is part of the team's ongoing research in the field of nonlinear optics.
The researchers believe that their optical switch can aid in speeding up computers. Moreover, it can also aid in compacting the data center.
This optical switch is a major accomplishment because it is the first nonlinear switch capable of high-speed optical data processing and switching.
In the future, this technology can help engineers create computers that are faster and more efficient. Such computers can also herald a new era in applications of optics.
For example, optical logic can make our data centers more efficient, and this switch can help us develop scalable on-chip optical interconnects.
Also, this type of switch can be used in quantum optics. Quantum optics is an area of physics that involves quantum mechanics and optical science. Quantum optics can make it possible to build more secure quantum computers.
Electrical engineers can also benefit from this technology because they can use it to understand better how devices work. In turn, they can use this knowledge to create smaller and more efficient devices.
Related article: Fiber-Optic Communications: How Quantum-Enhanced Receivers Can Boost It
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Written by April Fowell
