By firing a short, powerful donut-shaped laser beam into the air, researchers created a 45-meter-long structure that can guide light pulses like an optical fiber.
Physics
January 29, 2023
Lasers can be used to make optical fibers out of air Shutterstock/Marina Stamatova
Using a donut-shaped laser, they created a 45-meter-long optical fiber out of the air and sent a pulse of light through it. The technology could eventually be used to detect radioactive material from kilometers away.
Thin beams of light, like lasers, can convey information and energy, but they tend to spread out as they travel, so both are lost. This is why communication applications are often limited to glass tubes or optical fibers. …
