A group of researchers working at the City University of New York's (CUNY) Institute of Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers (IUSL) have devised a new method of "mapping spiraling light" that will enable service providers to extend the use of their already deployed fibers.
By using "untapped data channels" that already exist in the fiber, IUSL researchers believe they can increase the bandwidth of existing fibers to sate the consumer's ever-growing demand for video and multimedia content.
"People now can detect (light in) the ground channel, but this gives us a way to detect and measure a higher number of channels," said Giovanni Milione, a CUNY graduate student and inventor of the model. "Being able to follow polarization and other changes as light travels gives you insight into the material it travels through."
While polarization is a widely known method already used in consumer products such as sun glasses, the complex movement of optical light inside of an optical fiber has made it challenging to map higher channel light in a fiber.
These issues can be overcome, the IUSL claims, by using a globe-shaped Higher Order Poincare Sphere (HOPS) model that organizations "relationship between these vortices of light."
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