INDUSTRY NEWS
Simple solution to chromatic dispersion
which must overcome the fundamental difficulty that red light travels faster than blue light through transparent materials like glass. So, when an ultrashort laser pulse passes through a glass lens, the tightly packed wavelengths of light separate, destroying the usefulness of the beam. The ultra-thin coating uses precisely designed silicon pillars that briefly capture and hold red light before re-emitting it. This
According to a paper published in Photonics Online, researchers at the Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with Graz University of Technology, have developed a silicon coating that, when applied to the surface of a glass lens, can counteract the effects of dispersion. The technique can benefit many applications that use ultrashort laser pulses in the visible spectrum
Quick bursts of laser light, lasting less than a trillionth of a second, are used in a range of applications today. These ultrashort laser pulses have allowed scientists send long-distance, high-bitrate optical communications, to observe chemical reactions in real-time, to image deli- cate biological samples and build precise nanostructures. The research was co-au- thored by Marcus Ossiander, Y. W. Huang, W.T. Chen, Z. Wang, X. Yin, Y. A. Ibrahim, and M. Schultze.
temporary hold allows the slower-moving blue light to catch up. The researchers tested the coating by shortening laser pulses to only a couple quadrillionths of a sec- ond. The nanopillar silicon coating was made using the same commercial lithog- raphy tools as industrial semiconductors, making it easy to quickly apply these coatings to existing optical components and expand the applicability of femtosecond laser pulses.
AFL opens UK fibre optic cable facility
CityFibre, Ciena build UK 800G backbone
its European customers, such as Openreach, AFL will help speed up rollouts of full fibre broadband in support of the UK government’s target for 85% of UK premises to have access to gigabit-broadband by 2025. Fibre optic cables produced in the facility on Radway Road will be supplied to major UK and European network infrastructure projects that AFL and Fujikura customers are building. Fujikura’s investment in the facility will create new jobs in Swindon and the surrounding region including highly skilled engineering roles.
AFL, a subsidiary of Fujikura Ltd., Japan, has officially opened its new fibre optic cable facility in Swindon, UK, marking the start of commercial production of Fujikura’s Air Blown Wrapping Tube Cable (AB-WTC) using SpiderWeb Ribbon® (SWR®) fibre technology in the UK. AB-WTC is an ultra-high density outside
CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent wholesale full fibre platform, has announced the successful deployment of its first 800 Gbps backbone wavelength in partnership with network technology solutions vendor, Ciena. CityFibre says this is a key milestone on its path to building a full fibre digital infrastructure that will reach up to 8 million premises in the UK. The initial 800 Gbps wavelength serves 23 cities and towns and connects six ‘super core’ sites in Leicester, Peterborough Cambridge, Northampton, Milton Keynes and Lon- don. By the end of 2021,
two further rings will be added, providing the same enhanced core capacity be- tween Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol, Coventry and London. With an additional 90 locations due to be added before the end of 2023, this is the first phase of a na- tional, multi-terabit, DWDM network deployment. Once complete, CityFibre will own and operate a high availability, fully scalable backbone, enabled by Cie- na’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme programmable 800G coher- ent optics, 6500 Reconfig- urable Line System (RLS) and Manage, Control, Plan (MCP) intelligent domain controller.
plant cable designed specifically for FTTH and access network
applications. AFL’s new facility in Swindon is the first factory in the UK and Europe to produce this type of fibre optic cable. The investment in cable production in the UK for
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