Spin lasers can be used to send and receive information

Feb 25, 2015 14:53 GMT  ·  By

Quantum computing is far and wide considered to be the next paradigm shift in technological development, so a lot of effort and money is being put into researching this field.

Qubits aren't the only concept in quantum physics that are getting a workout though. There is another type of phenomenon that could prove a key in data processing: spin lasers.

RUB engineers at the Chair of Photonics and Terahertz Technology have just published a study in RUBIN, the science magazine of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Researchers have apparently optimized so-called spin lasers to the point where they could easily leave glass fiber in the dust.

A new way to send information

Quantum HDDs and CPUs will be tasked with processing information by means of light and atomic states instead of transistors.

It's not like Moore's Law can go forward for much longer as things are now. There will eventually come a point when shrinking transistors will become impossible or just non-viable economically.

Quantum processors will have the processing covered, and quantum HDDs will store petabytes of data easily eventually.

This only leaves interconnect technologies in need of an overhaul. After all, it would be strange if a computer system were held back by interface bottlenecks.

Kind of the reverse of the current situation, where interface technologies allow for performance beyond what storage devices and CPUs can normally do. Especially in the case of SSDs wired through PCI Express.

The RUB engineers have come up with something that can replace the glass fiber used in server farms today, to transfer data between individual computers.

The current method is this: semiconductor lasers generate light pulses which are used to code information in changes to light intensity. The faster the light intensity changes, the more info can be sent.

The RUB team believe they can do better by using light polarization instead of light intensity modulation. They can take a laser to generate a specific circularly polarized light, and code data in how polarization direction oscillates / alternates between two rotational directions.

Polarization oscillation is based on the spin of electrons (a quantum-mechanical property of electrons) and how the spins of a group are oriented in the laser.

Practical applications

It's hard to speculate just how much data could be sent through light polarization, but it will be several orders of magnitude beyond anything possible today.