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Optical physics

One ring to multiplex them all

Nature volume 546, pages 214–215 (2017)Cite this article

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High-speed communication systems that use optical fibres often require hundreds of lasers. An approach that replaces these lasers with a single, ring-shaped optical device offers many technical advantages. See Letter p.274

Optical-fibre communication systems form the backbone of the Internet. Current systems rely on a technology called wavelength-division multiplexing to transmit digital information at high speeds. On the transmitter side, this technology combines (multiplexes) many optical channels into a single optical fibre. Each channel uses a laser of a different frequency, and hundreds of lasers are typically needed to occupy the bandwidth available in a fibre-optic link. On page 274, Marin-Palomo et al.1 demonstrate that all of these lasers can be replaced by a single light source known as a microresonator frequency comb — a development that could lead to extremely fast data transmission.

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Figure 1: Optical-fibre communications using a single laser.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, 41296, Sweden

    Victor Torres-Company

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  1. Victor Torres-Company
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Correspondence to Victor Torres-Company.

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Torres-Company, V. One ring to multiplex them all. Nature 546, 214–215 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/546214a

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