"Time Telescope" Could Boost Fibre-Optic Communications

An anonymous reader writes "A time lens can focus a chunk of time to a point, rather like a normal lens focuses light rays. Put two time lenses together and you can create what a Cornell University team calls a 'time domain telescope' which can magnify time. They sent a 2.5 nanosecond long light pulse, encoding 24 bits of information, into their time telescope. What came out on the other side was the same 24 bit pulse, but compressed into 92 picoseconds. Squashing more information into a light pulse could help to send more information via optical fibres."

Comments

salesman speak

[circletimessquare]

"A time lens can focus a chunk of time to a point, rather like a normal lens focuses light rays."

no, its not LIKE a normal lens, it IS a normal lens. kind of like how "cloud computing" is the same client/ server model of decades past, a "times lens" is basically, uh, gee, a lens. but made sexy by introducing scifi fantasy terminology for the sake of grabbing attention

Re:salesman speak

[RightSaidFred99]

Client/server is a communications model. Cloud computing is a business model, a management model, a deployment model, etc... You might as well say "networking" is the real concept, and that fancy "cloud computing" is just a PHB term for "networking". Let's just call cloud "computer networking!".

Cloud computing isn't about a "client" and a "server". It's about moving more of your data and business processes off systems and software you support and letting someone else do it.

Cloud computing will have client server components. So what? When I use my Xbox 360 to play games over the internet should I tell people I'm using a "client/server system" or that I'm playing my god damn Xbox 360?

It's fun to mock the Latest Thing, and sometimes it deserves it, but cloud computing is not just a fancy name for Client/Server.

Deceptive Name

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm used to these physics guys doing all kinds of crazy things with invisibility cloaks and such so I took the title to be a literal time lense.

After RTFA, the "time lense" is a frequency up-shifter. Still impressive, but not supernatural as I had hoped.

Re:Deceptive Name

[Anonymous Coward]

After RTFA, the "time lense" is a frequency up-shifter.

So an Auto-Tune, basically.

Re:I think I saw a movie about this...

[megamerican]

...Ben Affleck starred.

We're boned.

So you were the guy who saw it.

Re:Time compression?

[radtea]

Doesn't that mean they compressed the amount of time it took light to travel that distance, and therefore changed the speed of light? Or was this simply a compression of the distance between the photons?

Neither. They've created a frequency upshifter (possibly one with interesting spectral properties to preserve the integrity of the encoded information, although the New Sensationalist article is so completely incoherent it's impossible to say if they have actually achieved that result) and given it the most dishonest, misleading name possible to confuse people, as posters above have noted, to grab attention.

They've got attention, but they haven't conveyed any information.

Ironic

[kitezh]

When I logged in, I was greeted with "Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future?"

First descibed in 1834 by John Scott Russell

[viking80]

This is a complete oversell on a normal everyday phenomenon. This is a simple compression of a lightpulse, and has been done for a long time. Dispersion usually smears out a pulse, but can easily, compress the pulse. There is no "bending of time" here. Look up "Chirped pulse amplification" and also "Prism compressor", and maybe "soliton". First descibed in 1834 by John Scott Russell

Re:First descibed in 1834 by John Scott Russell

[kmac06]

This is not at all an oversell (though admittedly bad journalism). It's not the same as chirped pulse amplification or prism compression.

In this case, you start out with an essentially monochromatic long pulse, whose intensity is modulated very slowly compared to the frequency of the light, but as fast as possible using typical telecom electrical modulators. A monochromatic pulse cannot be compressed using a grating or prism. Then the wavelength of the pulse is shifted, with the amount shifted depending on the relative position in the pulse (this is the "time-domain lens"). What you have now is similar to a chirped pulse, which is compressed using a long fiber (I don't know why they don't use prism compression or something else faster here). The time-domain lensing is then undone, "de-chirping" the pulse, leaving you with a much shorter essentially monochromatic pulse at the starting wavelength, with the same amplitude modulation (i.e., carrying the same information).

The point being a huge increase in the amount of information that can be carried in a fiber.

What happens when you combine them?

[Alzheimers]

What happens when you take four Time Lenses and align them to be 90 degree angles to each other?

ONE MAN KNOWS THE TRUTH!

Re:Time compression?

[pavon]

Imagine a speech audio signal.

If you were to just compress the signal in time, the rate of speech would increase, but the frequency (pitch) would as well - it would sound like a chipmunk. This is what a simple resampling program would do.

On the other hand if you were to just frequency-shift the signal (say by heterodyning) then the rate of speech would be the same, but the pitch would change. This is what pitch-correction programs do.

If you do both in series and in opposite directions so the cancel, then the pitch remains the same but rate of speech is now increased. This is what fast playback programs (say for audio books) do.

The researchers figured out how to do the last to light using simple lenses. This could be useful because you can send the data down the same channel (like a frequency multiplexed fiber) as the original signal was intended for.