Category Physics

TUM researchers (l-r) Fabian Steiner, Georg Böcherer, and Patrick Schulte with the statue of Claude Shannon, father of information theory. Credit: Denise Panyik-Dale/Alcatel-Lucent

Researchers have achieved unprecedented transmission capacity and spectral efficiency in an optical communications field trial with a new modulation technique. The breakthrough research could extend the capability of optical networks to meet surging data traffic demands.

In an optical communications field trial, Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the TU Munich showed that the flexibility and performance of optical networks can be maximized when adjustable transmission rates are dynamically adapted to channel conditions and traffic demands...

Memristor chip. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton

A nanoscale device, called a memristor, could be the ‘missing link’ in the development of implants that use electrical signals from the brain to help treat medical conditions. Monitoring neuronal cell activity is fundamental to neuroscience and the development of neuroprosthetics – biomedically engineered devices that are driven by neural activity. However, a persistent problem is the device being able to process the neural data in real-time, which imposes restrictive requirements on bandwidth, energy and computation capacity.

In a new study, published in Nature Communications, the researchers showed that memristors could provide real-time processing of neuronal signals (spiking events) leading to efficient data compressio...

Carbon tube (center) as a photon source and superconducting nanowires as receivers constitute part of the optical chip. Credit: W.Pernice/WWU

Whether for use in safe data encryption, ultrafast calculation of huge data volumes or so-called quantum simulation of highly complex systems: Optical quantum computers are a source of hope for tomorrow’s computer technology. For the first time, scientists now have succeeded in placing a complete quantum optical structure on a chip. This fulfills one condition for the use of photonic circuits in optical quantum computers.

The light source for the quantum photonic circuit used by the scientists for the first time were special nanotubes made of carbon...