optical fiber
Optical fiber is well-known for its ability to carry information at high speeds over long distances. Twenty years after the first transatlantic fiber optic cable was laid, these strands of ultrapure glass continue to offer unrivaled bandwidths. They have evolved a long way from the first low-loss fiber demonstrated in the late 1960s.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has unveiled a method for calibrating entire waveforms -- graphical shapes showing how electrical signals vary over time -- rather than just parts of waveforms as is current practice.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The most ambitious attempt yet to trace the history of the universe has seen "first light." The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), took its first astronomical data on the night of Sept. 14-15 at the Sloan Foundation telescope in New Mexico.
Berkeley, CA - BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is the most ambitious attempt yet to map the expansion history of the Universe using the technique known as baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO).
Airline travelers are used to being instructed to turn off computers and cell phones during takeoffs and landings as a precaution against interfering with the plane?s navigational equipment, but outside sources of high-energy interference can be even more dangerous.
To cut the cost of bringing high-speed Internet to rural areas, Dr. Ka Lun Lee and colleagues at the University of Melbourne and NEC Australia in the state of Victoria are experimenting with a way to boost the reach of existing technology.
WASHINGTON, March 16-- To cut the cost of bringing high-speed Internet to rural areas, Dr. Ka Lun Lee and colleagues at the University of Melbourne and NEC Australia in the state of Victoria are experimenting with a way to boost the reach of existing technology.
Sliced light is how we communicate now. Millions of phone calls and cable television shows per second are dispatched through fibers in the form of digital zeros and ones formed by chopping laser pulses into bits.
Scientists have developed a theory describing light pulse dynamics in optical fibers that explains how an interplay of noise, line imperfections and pulse collisions lead to the deterioration of information in optical fiber lines. The theory will help to enhance the performance necessary for high-speed optical communication systems like video on demand and ultra-broadband Internet, and the research has helped establish a new field of inquiry -- the statistical physics of optical communications.
Two physicists have produced a rainbow of visible and invisible colors by focusing laser light in a specially designed optical fiber that confines light in a glass core whose diameter is 40 times smaller than that of a human hair. The researchers are among the few scientists in the world to achieve and study the phenomenon, which is called "supercontinuum generation in nonlinear fibers."
