New Sapphire Fiber Optics Could Lead to Cleaner Air Travel
From fusion reactors to your internet connection, fiber-optic cables have a wide range of applications due to how efficiently they send data when compared to traditional copper wires. The science is fairly straightforward: data-encoded light signals are sent through a fiber-optic wire roughly the diameter of a strand of hair. When bundled up, these wires become cables that can transmit large caches of information across the world.
But even with fiber optics, data can be imprecise. While the fibers are tiny, they’re massive when compared to light, which bounces around inside the cable and can convert to different wavelengths as a result. It’s not much of an issue when we’re talking about your internet connection, but it can pose a problem when those cables are used on machines like airplane sensors that gauge engine temperature and emissions output.
That’s why University of Oxford researchers developed a new type of sapphire fiber optics that focuses the light into one wavelength. In a new paper published Thursday in Optics Express, the team describes how they were able to create a minuscule channel along the sapphire fiber that’s roughly one-hundredth of a millimeter in diameter. This allowed them to focus the light into the wire into roughly a single wavelength.
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