Optics-on-a-chip new device

The MIT researchers could have fixed a problem that has long plagued fiber-optic networks: how to easily transmit light waves over long distance, harnessing full power and speed. Light waves gradually weaken over distances and tools to fix it are today expensive. They built a device that splits the light into beams, rotates one of the polarized beam, transmits and recombines the two beams on their way out of the circuit, all on the same silicon chip. If industrialized and cost-effective, the device could eventually make its way onto NG telecom chips, and help redefine how optical networks are built.