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New Nanophotonic Waveguides developed at MIT

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the smoke-and-mirrors dept.

SimilarityEngine writes "Physicists at MIT have developed a new kind of nanophotonic waveguide, overcoming 'several long-standing obstacles' to move us one step closer to optical computers. Photonics strives to improve on electronics in terms of space requirements, speed and energy consumption - but until recently, it was not possible to perform well in all three areas simultaneously. In their paper, John Joannopoulos et al. demonstrate how to reliably encode a signal as surface plasmons which side-steps such limitations."

23 comments

  1. eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    This is a first.

    A story that absolutely noone wants to comment on.

    1. Re:eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Amazing. "News for nerds" that goes over even the nerds' heads...

    2. Re:eep by Beren · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Amazing. "News for nerds" that goes over even the nerds' heads...

      Just goes to show what kind of "nerds" we have populating the site these days...

      Time was when you could toss a story like this out there and the readers would understand and be able to discuss it...

      /sigh
    3. Re:eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey dipshit, "noone" is not a word. Perhaps you meant NO ONE. Is your spacebar broken? Can I Paypal you a dollar for a new one?

    4. Re:eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I'll take that dollar.

      Justshoveitwaaaayupyourass,asdeepasyoucangetit. That'llbuymeanewspacebar.

    5. Re:eep by Maian · · Score: 2, Funny

      I blame the title. Too much Star Trek mumbo jumbo. Nanophotonic Waveguides...wtf is that? Needs to be nonsensical title like "one step closer to phasers".

    6. Re:eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How come it worked between sentences? I think I'll keep my dollar, which incidentally is already up my ass.

    7. Re:eep by weemattisnot · · Score: 1

      Aren't the posters of "too bad slashdot members aren't smart anymore" even worse than the non-nerds you refer to? Aren't you guilty of spamming slashdot with comments like this? Aren't I?

    8. Re:eep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This is a first. A story that absolutely noone wants to comment on."

      If, instead, you chose you use the words "Please move along. Nothing to see here", you would have quickly been modded as a troll, or offtopic. But after 21 post in 2 days, I think it really applies.

      --
      If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, and all that other faggot shit from that exceedingly mediocre movie.

  2. Well this discussion needs to be livened up. by BlackCobra43 · · Score: 1

    I, for one, welcome our new nanophotonic waveguide overlords.

    --
    I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
    1. Re:Well this discussion needs to be livened up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In societ Russia, nanophotonic wave - guides You!!!

  3. MIT by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why does MIT always take full credit? There is at least a dozen organizations that contributed to the pre-research heading to this. Just look at the pdf if you don't believe.

    1. Re:MIT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because the people who read these things in order to summarize them just want to get your attention. The world knows MIT, not everyone knows DARPA outside of technical circles.

      MIT = instant credibility

  4. The Plasmons are Dead! by sarlos · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The Plasmons? I thought the Glutons erradicated them! I hear the Fruitons are the longstanding enemies of the Glutons and are teaming up with the Clapons to attempt revenge for the savage slaughtering of innocent Plasmons...

    --
    Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
  5. The cool signifigance of this by tempest69 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Ok, IANAQP (quantum-physicist), so I am going to butcher this horribly. From what I get from the article is that they are able to pipe photons distances less than their wavelength. by the use of surface plasmons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmon this lets them use longer wavelenght light (ie visible spectrum> with very small parts. The use of short wavelength light (x-rays) can break covalent bonds of the chip, causing the chip to fail.

    So pretty much this means that optic technology has made a nice stride in catching up to classic electronic technology. But we wont be seeing the Pentuim-Optic and day soon.

    Storm

  6. Nanophotonic waveguides? by OldManAndTheC++ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Come on admit it, you took this phrase from an episode of Star Trek, didn't you?

    Plasma conduits, intertial dampers, blah blah blah. You aren't fooling anybody.

    --
    Soylent Green is peoplicious!
    1. Re:Nanophotonic waveguides? by geckosan · · Score: 1

      Why, not at all. It's a trivial matter to comment pertinently on this matter, and with few enough bugs that it will be up to Slashdot's standards. However I appear to have left my pen at the grocery store, and as opposed to continuing this comment wish to retrieve it forthwith. Good day.

      --
      Hi
  7. Can somebody please clear this up? by w.timmeh · · Score: 1

    From what I gather from my (limited) physics, and of course Wikipedia:

    A surface plasmon-polariton is formed from the interaction of a photon and surface plasmon (a sort of electronic vibrational mode of the conductor?). This travels along the metal/insulator waveguide with shorter wavelength than that of the original photon, reducing the size requirement of the device. These surface plasmons travel at a somewhat slower velocity than photons, but faster than electrons (which reduces the energy scale of the system through non-linear effects... how?).

    Also, how does stacking the insulator layers increase the bandwidth?

    1. Re:Can somebody please clear this up? by Hartree · · Score: 4, Informative

      Also, how does stacking the insulator layers increase the bandwidth?

      A common trick to make extremely small solid state devices more broadbanded is to put a number of them close enough together so that they interact a bit.

      It's kinda like hooking multiple springs together. Each has its own prefered vibration frequency, but when they're hooked together, the system can vibrate at not only those original frequencies, but also other ones as well.

      When you have very large numbers of interacting springs, the ranges of frequencies allowed tend to smear out. This effectively means that the device can handle a whole range of frequencies, not just the original one.

      Just as springs have vibrations, these plasmons are vibrations. Just like springs have preferred frequencies to vibrate at, these waveguides have preferred frequencies. You put the waveguides close enough that they interact a bit, and it tends to allow more frequencies. Stack up a whole bunch of the waveguide layers, and you can smear out the response so that it's more broadbanded.

      This sort of thing is done in a lot of systems based on vibrations.

      (There are more details to it, but that's the general idea, and the best I can do at the moment with a cold making it hard to think. ;)

  8. Neat idea. by Hartree · · Score: 1

    It's similar to what's done at much lower frequencies with surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. There, you convert the electrical signal to a sound wave in a material, process it (filter it, spread out the signal components, etc) with structures in the material, then convert it back to an electrical signal.

    In this, the material itself converts the light signal into a vibration in the surface electrons, you have structures set up that process it, then it converts back to light when it's reemitted from the surface.

  9. Nanophotonic Waveguides by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nanophotonic Waveguides, Nanophotonic Waveguides, ahhhh I love saying that. Nanophotonic Waveguides.

  10. Star Trek by clarinex73 · · Score: 1

    Captain! If we manipulate the nanophotonic waveguide of our phasers, the Borg won't be able to adjust the frequency of their shielding quickly enough to compensate!