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University professors in South Africa have come up with a way of creating twisted laser light without the need for complex lab equipment.
According to the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), who worked with South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Italy’s University of Naples on the project, they have created a laser that can twist at its output.
This twist is known as orbital angular momentum (OAM) and normally requires fairly complex set-ups in a lab in order to be achieved.
“The problem is that usually lasers cannot tell the difference between light that is twisted clockwise and light that is twisted anti-clockwise, and so the laser simply gives a combination of both in an uncontrolled manner,” the university explained in its announcement on the laser.
Now they have managed to create a source for laser light that can map different angles of movement so that it can be controlled and as a result twisted far more easily.
This has the potential to be a hugely useful breakthrough if it can be reproduced at scale, potentially serving as a future replacement for fibre optic cables in communications. Such connections could carry double the bandwidth of optical links without major changes needed.
The university said it could also make a difference to laser machining, microscopy, and imaging applications.
