It is a spooky feature of Grand Central Station that when you whisper something against the wall, your voice can resonate across the perimeter of the building and sneak up on you from behind. The similar ‘whispering gallery’ principle is essential to next-gen optical computing : light signals must be sent on extremely circuitous journeys through ‘microresonators’, which temporarily bottle up the beams and thereby function memory.
Thus far, microresonators have generally been crafted from silicon wafers etched with the a protracted series of loops. However, even probably the most precise etching leaves imperfections, which quickly cause the signal to lose its strength and fade away. Now, researchers at OFS Laboratories in Somerset, N. J., have give you one more variety of microresonator which can potentially hold onto light 100 times longer.
The hot technology diverts light onto a stretch of optic fiber that have been specially manufactured with tiny step-changes in its diameter. When the signal hits this abrupt change, it reverses and goes back the other way — and, if it hits another diameter change, it’ll effectively enter a whispering gallery contained in the fiber, bouncing up and down with only minor attenuation. The OFS scientists claim their microresonator may seem in “specialized devices” in barely two or three years, that is good to listen to, because electronics is commencing to get old.
The winners of the 2011 Engadget Awards — Readers’ Choice
NPD: Apple grabs over 1 / 4 of the mobile PC business in Q4 2011 (including iPads), HP tops with laptops
