Spektrum der Wissenschaft Februar 2012

Prof. Luc Thévenaz of the Group for Fibre Optics is on the cover of the German language version of the « Scientific American » (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) for his article entitled « Der Licht-Turbo - mehr Tempo für Datennetze ».

Light propagates at about 300 000 kilometres per second - but only in vacuum. Researchers can now reduce this speed almost arbitrarily and can even store light pulses in special materials. But their fantasy goes still farther: new optical technologies could make the global data traffic significantly speed up.
The slowing of light is one of the most amazing advances in optics. Thanks to new architectures based on this completely unanticipated technology, we may significantly improve communication networks in a near future and also produce novel photonic devices showing much lower energy consumption.
The basic idea may seem paradoxical. We have eventually learned with much effort how to transfer into a single optical fibre thousands of gigabits per second of data - and now we want to slow down the light that transports these data? In fact, this achievement means that we have now control over a previously inaccessible variable for a light wave, namely the time. This is of utmost importance for many applications. And as well as we can slow a light signal, we can also store the information it contains - in principle indefinitely.