Vortex laser offers hope for Moore's Law July 28, 2016 by Cory Nealon Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The image above shows vortex laser on a chip. Because the laser beam travels in a corkscrew pattern, encoding information into different vortex twists, it's able to carry 10 times or more the amount of information than that of conventional lasers. Credit: University at Buffalo Like a whirlpool, a new light-based communication tool carries data in a swift, circular motion. Described in a study published today (July 28, 2016) by the journal Science, the optics advancement could become a central component of next generation computers designed to handle society's growing demand for information sharing. It may also be a salve to those fretting over the predicted end of Moore's Law, the idea that researchers will find new ways to continue making computers smaller, faster and cheaper. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-vortex-laser-law.html#jCp
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/464 Orbital angular momentum microlaser: Abstract Structured light provides an additional degree of freedom for modern optics and practical applications. The effective generation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) lasing, especially at a micro- and nanoscale, could address the growing demand for information capacity. By exploiting the emerging non-Hermitian photonics design at an exceptional point, we demonstrate a microring laser producing a single-mode OAM vortex lasing with the ability to precisely define the topological charge of the OAM mode. The polarization associated with OAM lasing can be further manipulated on demand, creating a radially polarized vortex emission. Our OAM microlaser could find applications in the next generation of integrated optoelectronic devices for optical communications in both quantum and classical regimes. Microlasers with a twist Structured light, in the form of helical wavefronts, provides an additional degree of freedom to encode information for optical communications. Creating light beams with the desired amount of optical angular momentum, or twist, has usually been achieved with bulk optic devices. Miao et al. demonstrate a possible route for an integrated optics approach in which a twisted-light source with a controlled amount of optical angular momentum is generated internally to the designed device structure. These microlasers could find application in telecommunication and information technologies to increase the rate of information transmission. Science, this issue p. 464
