Researchers at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) have developed new fibreoptic technology claimed to be able to harness “twisted” light beams to supply Internet feeds as much as 100-times faster than current technology

According to a paper in the Nature Communications journal, current fibre-optic comms use just a fraction of light’s capacity by carrying data on the colour spectrum.

An RMIT team has been instead using light in a state of “orbital angular momentum” (OAM) – carrying data on light waves that have been twisted into a spiral to increase their capacity.

Says co-lead author Dr Haoran Ren from RMIT’s School of Science: “Our miniature OAM nano-electronic detector is designed to separate different OAM light states in a continuous order and to decode the information carried by twisted light.

“To do this previously would require a machine the size of a table, which is completely impractical for telecommunications. By using ultrathin topological nanosheets measuring a fraction of a millimetre, our invention does this job better – and fits on the end of an optical fibre.”

Professor Min Gu – who co-authored the paper – says the invention could be applied to increase the bandwidth, and potentially the processing speed, of that fibre by more than 100 times within the next couple of years.