Tau.Neutrino said:
A 100-year-old physics problem has been solved
Researchers have found a way around what was considered a fundamental limitation of physics for over 100 years. They were able to conceive resonant systems that can store electromagnetic waves over a long period of time while maintaining a broad bandwidth. Their study opens up a number of doors, particularly in telecommunications.
At EPFL, researchers challenge a fundamental law and discover that more electromagnetic energy can be stored in wave-guiding systems than previously thought. The discovery has implications in telecommunications. Working around the fundamental law, they conceived resonant and wave-guiding systems capable of storing energy over a prolonged period while keeping a broad bandwidth. Their trick was to create asymmetric resonant or wave-guiding systems using magnetic fields.
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> a resonator can either store energy for a long time or have a broad bandwidth, but not both at the same time.
I’m only familiar with long time narrow bandwidth storage systems. The possibility of broad bandwidth hadn’t occurred to me.
> This law was first formulated by K. S. Johnson in 1914. But that limitation is now a thing of the past. The researchers came up with a hybrid resonant / wave-guiding system made of a magneto-optic material that, when a magnetic field is applied, is able to stop the wave and store it for a prolonged period, thereby accumulating large amounts of energy. Then when the magnetic field is switched off, the trapped pulse is released. The conventional time-bandwidth limit was even beaten by a factor of 1,000. The scientists further showed that, theoretically, there is no upper ceiling to this limit.
Cripes that’s useful.
> all-optical buffers in telecommunication networks
Yes. That’s the first thing that came to mind.
> Other potential applications include on-chip spectroscopy, broadband light harvesting and energy storage, and broadband optical camouflaging, the number of applications is limited only by one’s imagination.
Consider my mind boggling. I can’t even begin to envisage the range of practical applications.