Novel optical-fiber design could reduce inefficiency and enable faster transmission of data-carrying light pulses
Optical fibers are rapidly replacing electrical wires as the primary medium for sending digital information over long distances. Without suffering from interference, pulses of light travelling along these thin strands of glass can carry more data than electrical signals. However, getting light into fibers can be difficult, and this inefficiency limits the total strength of the optical signal received at the far end. The solution may be a fiber structure that was recently proposed by Xia Yu at the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and co‐workers which uses a metal core to reduce these aptly named insertion losses. "Our compact fiber-based coupler device is able to couple with light more efficiently and faster than conventional devices," says Yu.