Thanks for the info!
It occurred to me that with the ability now that is developing to combine optical components on silicone chips or all optical chips that the bandwidth opened up here will or can be just phenomenal! I passed on the link to a 'Netizen' for his comment and maybe to write a paper on it... This individual himself is quite an interesting 'find' but you would need to 'vet' his assertions as 100% correct before you went out on a limb and published... Reading his first two papers will give you all the 'Gut Feeling' that you may need to pursue him just a little further... This info on twisted light seems to me to have implications in many many fields, I don't think that it overturns Shannon's communications theory it just gives many more 'channels' to apply it too.
Oh!...the web site is http;//www.milesmathis.com
He is also an artist, a painter, and his art site is here
http://www.mileswmathis.com
He writes science papers 'on the side', he writes very well.
Thank you for a very interesting development.
It’s no wonder we have a “spectrum crisis” on our hands: In 2011 alone, global mobile data traffic more than doubled and experts estimate that traffic will increase 18-fold in the next five years.
With the explosion of digital devices, radio waves have become increasingly congested—but scientists in Italy and Sweden may have found a way to eradicate the problem completely by making a few minor tweaks to the current technology.
The key lies in changing the shape of radio waves. Scientists discovered that when twisting waves into a spiral shape, existing frequencies could hold multiple data streams instead of just one. In theory, the new technique allows for an infinite number of channels to exist in any one fixed bandwidth.
“In a three-dimensional perspective, this phase twist looks like a fusillli-pasta-shaped beam, study author Fabrizio Tamburini told PhysOrg. “Each of these twisted beams can be independently generated, propagated and detected even in the very same frequency band, behaving as independent communication channels.”
Tamburini and study co-author Bo Thide of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics demonstrated their findings outside the laboratory in Venice last June. Using twisted radio waves, the physicists were able to send two audio signals within the bandwidth required by one across the lagoon and over a distance of 442 m (1450 ft).
Perhaps best of all, the technique doesn’t require new and expensive technology. The demonstration in Venice was made using a regular satellite dish—the team simply cut one side to create a helical shape. To detect the twisted waves, an additional antenna was needed.
According to Tamburini, it’s plausible to have 55 channels in the same band of frequency. His findings are published in the New Journal of Physics.
Video: New Journal of Physics, Image: Roger Karlsson/Flickr
[via BBC]
