Fibre optics and optical communications articles within Nature Communications

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  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    The application space for optical fibers is growing, enabled by fibers built using special materials and processes. In this Review, the authors discuss the materials science behind producing crystalline core fibers for diverse applications and progress in the field.

    • Ursula J. Gibson
    • , Lei Wei
    •  & John Ballato

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-space communication in the mid-IR domain has many potential applications, but security is still challenging. Here, the authors use chaos synchronization in a QCL-based free-space link as a way to increase privacy of such transmissions.

    • Olivier Spitz
    • , Andreas Herdt
    •  & Frédéric Grillot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fiber-optics based on organic crystals could have potential for unique telecommunications applications but typically transmit visible wavelengths. Here the authors present mechanically robust organic crystals with favourable optical properties across the main telecommunication bands in the near-infrared.

    • Durga Prasad Karothu
    • , Ghada Dushaq
    •  & Panče Naumov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Atomic clocks and their networks are useful tools for optical communications and frequency metrology. Here the authors use phase stabilization and active tip-tilt to suppress atmospheric effects and enable optical frequency transfer through free-space.

    • Benjamin P. Dix-Matthews
    • , Sascha W. Schediwy
    •  & Peter Wolf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing neural interfaces are limited in accessing one, small brain region. Here, the authors introduce a scaffold with helix hollow channels, which direct multisite multifunctional fibre probes into the brain at different angles, allowing for simultaneous recording and stimulation across distant regions.

    • Shan Jiang
    • , Dipan C. Patel
    •  & Xiaoting Jia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hollow core fibers have low light attenuation because the light travels through air rather than glass, but other sources of loss have limited the performance so far. Here the authors design and demonstrate a Nested Antiresonant Nodeless hollow core fiber that has losses competitive with standard solid-core fiber at several important wavelengths.

    • Hesham Sakr
    • , Yong Chen
    •  & Francesco Poletti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Performance of distributed optical fiber sensing is partially limited by the need for hardware changes. Here, the authors introduce a coding algorithm that enables enhanced performance through faster processing using only software-based methods.

    • Xizi Sun
    • , Zhisheng Yang
    •  & Luc Thévenaz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) are used to generate low-noise microwave oscillations for many technologies but typically operate in a limited frequency range. Here the authors present an OEO that takes advantage of random distributed feedback and an open cavity structure to produce ultra-wideband random microwave signals.

    • Zengting Ge
    • , Tengfei Hao
    •  & Ming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Characterizing the modes at the output of a multimode fiber is time consuming due to computational cost. Here the authors present an algorithm for few-mode-fiber mode decomposition with a fast processing time and using only intensity measurements.

    • Egor S. Manuylovich
    • , Vladislav V. Dvoyrin
    •  & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adaptive optics wavefront sensors need to be in a pupil plane and are insensitive to certain wavefront-error modes. The authors present a wavefront sensor based on a photonic lantern fibre-mode-converter and deep learning, which can be placed at the same focal plane accessing nondegenerate wavefront information and reconstructing the wavefront.

    • Barnaby R. M. Norris
    • , Jin Wei
    •  & Sergio G. Leon-Saval

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors demonstrate a route to high resolution microendoscopy using a multicore fibre with a photonic lantern. They show that distinct multimode patterns of light can be projected from the output of the lantern by individually exciting the single-mode MCF cores, whose patterns are highly stable to fibre movement.

    • Debaditya Choudhury
    • , Duncan K. McNicholl
    •  & Robert R. Thomson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Information and communication datacentres require a large amount of energy for their cooling systems, which could be decreased by working at higher temperatures. Here, the authors introduce a silicon-polymer hybrid modulator that maintains high data rates for long periods at high temperatures that could be used under such conditions, to reduce energy consumption.

    • Guo-Wei Lu
    • , Jianxun Hong
    •  & Shiyoshi Yokoyama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Structured light is a valuable addition to many optical applications. Here, the authors introduce a method for producing tailorable structured light beams at the output of a multicore fiber amplifier by controlling the input to each fiber core.

    • Di Lin
    • , Joel Carpenter
    •  & David J. Richardson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In-phase/quadrature (IQ) electro-optic modulators are underpinning devices for coherent transmission technology. Here the authors present IQ modulators in the lithium-niobate-on-insulator platform, which provide improved overall performance and advanced modulation formats for future coherent transmission systems.

    • Mengyue Xu
    • , Mingbo He
    •  & Xinlun Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Real-time dynamic Fourier analysis of high-speed signals is difficult using either digital or analog schemes. Here, the authors present a universal analog approach that can track the changing frequency spectrum of waveforms in a real-time fashion at the nanosecond level, continuously and with no gaps.

    • Saikrishna Reddy Konatham
    • , Reza Maram
    •  & José Azaña

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compact spectrometers can be useful in many applications and many sophisticated architectures have been proposed. In this work, the authors show that with an evaporating droplet on a fiber tip, spectrometry can be robustly and accurately performed with a simple and passive microfluidic system.

    • P. Malara
    • , A. Giorgini
    •  & G. Gagliardi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Typically, the performance of the state-of-the-art laser sensors is insufficient for many high precision applications. Here, the authors report mode-phase-difference photothermal spectroscopy with a dual-mode anti-resonant hollow-core optical fiber and demonstrate acetylene detection with ultra-high sensitivity.

    • Pengcheng Zhao
    • , Yan Zhao
    •  & Pu Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The amount of information that a quantum channel can transmit is fundamentally bounded by the amount of noise in the channel. Here, the authors consider the realistic case with loss and thermal noise errors and prove that correlated multi-mode thermal states can achieve higher rates than single-mode ones.

    • Kyungjoo Noh
    • , Stefano Pirandola
    •  & Liang Jiang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Frequency combs have the potential to be used as multi-wavelength sources in future optical communications through fiber. Here the authors demonstrate joint phase processing of multi-wavelength comb transmission, and show two schemes to improve performance and reduce complexity.

    • Lars Lundberg
    • , Mikael Mazur
    •  & Peter A. Andrekson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mathematical approaches for simultaneous characterisation of localized and extended fields in optical signals are not well developed. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of the Nonlinear Fourier transform approach based on the Zakharov-Shabat spectral problem for the analysis of fibre laser radiation.

    • Srikanth Sugavanam
    • , Morteza Kamalian Kopae
    •  & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors describe the control of the temporal shape and polarization of the total transmission through a multimode fibre. Most of the previous works studied spatial control of the output field at the expense of the temporal behaviour.

    • Mickael Mounaix
    •  & Joel Carpenter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Long-range correlations play a role in wave transport through disordered media but have rarely been studied in other systems. Here, the authors discover long-range spatio-temporal correlations in multimode fibers with strong random mode mixing, revealing the possibility of utilizing such correlations for effective pulse delivery through the fiber.

    • Wen Xiong
    • , Chia Wei Hsu
    •  & Hui Cao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temporal cloaks, which hide a temporal event within a signal, have been previously limited to very short and periodic event cloaking. Here the authors report a temporal cloak with a programmable-length cloaking window using a silicon microring and optical frequency comb.

    • Feng Zhou
    • , Siqi Yan
    •  & Xinliang Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical transmission of images through a multimode fibre remains an outstanding challenge. Here, the authors implement a method that statistically reconstructs the inverse transformation matrix for a fibre and demonstrate real-time imaging of natural scenes in full colour, high resolution and high frame rate.

    • Piergiorgio Caramazza
    • , Oisín Moran
    •  & Daniele Faccio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previously, separating Laguerre-Gauss modes of light contained in a single beam required complex setups and could only separate a few modes. Here, the authors demonstrate a simple device capable of spatially decomposing a beam into hundreds of Laguerre-Gaussian components.

    • Nicolas K. Fontaine
    • , Roland Ryf
    •  & Joel Carpenter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing bandwidth demands in optical communications requires components to be compact with energy-efficient operation. Here, the authors demonstrate plasmonic IQ modulators on a silicon photonics platform with phase shifters, operating with sub-1V electronics at 100 GBaud and low electrical energy consumption.

    • Wolfgang Heni
    • , Yuriy Fedoryshyn
    •  & Juerg Leuthold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Storage-free quantum repeaters represent a viable alternative to quantum-memory-based ones. Here, the authors propose a modified scheme for Bell state measurements which reduces the necessary resources for realising such an all-photonic repeater, and show a proof-of-principle implementation.

    • Yasushi Hasegawa
    • , Rikizo Ikuta
    •  & Nobuyuki Imoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Controlling complex properties of optical systems, like the output of nonlinear light sources, is increasingly important for applications. Here, Wetzel et al. use an actively-controlled photonic chip to prepare patterns of femtosecond laser pulses used for tailoring supercontinuum generation.

    • Benjamin Wetzel
    • , Michael Kues
    •  & Roberto Morandotti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional distributed Brillouin sensing allows real-time sampling at high spatial resolution, but is so far restricted to measuring quantities inside the fibre core. Here, Chow et al. demonstrate a distributed forward Brillouin sensor that is sensitive to quantities outside the fibre bulk.

    • Desmond M. Chow
    • , Zhisheng Yang
    •  & Luc Thévenaz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Distributed fibre sensors are so far restricted to the monitoring of conditions within the core. Here, Bashan et al. introduce distributed optomechanical mapping of outside media, where light cannot reach. The sensor resolves forward stimulated Brillouin scattering through Rayleigh back-scatter.

    • Gil Bashan
    • , Hilel Hagai Diamandi
    •  & Avi Zadok

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Countering the optical network ‘capacity crunch’ requires developments in optical fibres. Here, the authors report a hollow-core fibre with conjoined tubes in the cladding and a negative-curvature core shape. It exhibits a transmission loss of 2 dB/km at 1512 nm and less than 16 dB/km bandwidth in the 1302–1637 nm range.

    • Shou-fei Gao
    • , Ying-ying Wang
    •  & Pu Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase-sensitive amplifiers are known for low-noise amplification and nonlinearity mitigation, but their long-haul implementation is challenging. The authors use these amplifiers to show a long-haul optical link with a 5.6-times reach improvement over conventional amplifier performance, affirming their viability as an alternative technology.

    • Samuel L.I. Olsson
    • , Henrik Eliasson
    •  & Peter A. Andrekson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dark-pulse combs may be useful for coherent communications since they display high power conversion efficiency. Here, the authors report the first demonstration of coherent wavelength division multiplexing using dark pulse microresonator combs high signal-to-noise while maintaining a low on-chip pump power.

    • Attila Fülöp
    • , Mikael Mazur
    •  & Victor Torres-Company

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Oblivious transfer is a standard primitive for cryptography between two parties which do not trust each other. Here, the authors propose a continuous-variable protocol which is secure against a dishonest party with bounded quantum storage capacity, and realize a proof-of-principle implementation.

    • Fabian Furrer
    • , Tobias Gehring
    •  & Stephanie Wehner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable solutions for data regeneration of multiple parallel channels are elusive. Here the authors report a scalable wavelength-division multiplexing technique for phase regeneration and demonstrate the highest reported number of regenerated wavelength-division multiplexed channels in a single phase regenerator.

    • Pengyu Guan
    • , Francesco Da Ros
    •  & Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show that integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies enables all-optical XOR, NOT and AND logical functions that are performed at up to 40 gigabits per second with few femtojoules per bit energy consumption within a coherent fully fiberized network.

    • Angelos Xomalis
    • , Iosif Demirtzioglou
    •  & Nikolay I. Zheludev

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