Revolutionary light tweezers promise faster, more efficient Internet data: New Zealand

New Zealand scientists claimed Thursday they have invented tweezers made of light that can manipulate light in a move that promises a breakthrough in Internet communications.

University of Auckland laser physics researchers said they had demonstrated the "temporal tweezing of light" for the first time

While everyday mechanical tweezers moved objects too tiny for human fingers, the "temporal light tweezers" made of laser light themselves enabled the change in time separation between pulses of light.

The technique worked on pulses of light traveling in a loop of fiber optical cable, the same cable used to carry broadband in many countries, the researchers said in a statement.

Temporal light tweezers were able to speed up or slow down individual light pulses and so change their separation, for example from 100 picosecond (100 millionth of a millionth of a second) to 50 picosecond.

"We are pretty excited about these results and the huge range of possible applications the technique might have, especially in the context of next-generation optical communications," Dr Miro Erkintalo said in the statement.

"Our ability to move pulses around in time means we can reconfigure an optical data signal without the need for power- hungry, electronic conversion, which is what happens now," he said.

"And with the tremendous pace at which the amount of optical data is growing, faster and more energy-efficient data processing will be needed sooner rather than later." Endi