{"id":157293,"date":"2023-02-08T03:23:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T09:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/optical-fibers-go-topological"},"modified":"2023-02-08T03:23:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T09:23:50","slug":"optical-fibers-go-topological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/optical-fibers-go-topological","title":{"rendered":"Optical Fibers Go Topological"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/optical-fibers-go-topological2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new design for an optical fiber borrows concepts from topology to protect light from imperfections in the fiber\u2019s light-guiding materials or from distortions in its cross section.<\/p>\n<p>Using concepts from the mathematical field of topology, researchers at the University of Bath, UK, have designed an optical fiber that can robustly propagate light, even if there are variations in the properties of its light-guiding materials or in its overall geometry [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v16\/16#c1\" class=\"\">1<\/a>]. The team thinks that this newfound topological protection could enable advances in optical communication and photonic quantum computing.<\/p>\n<p>The concept of topology is often explained using a joke about a donut and a coffee cup. A coffee cup made of rubber can be continuously twisted and stretched\u2014no cuts need to be made\u2014so that it takes on the shape of a donut. Even though the object\u2019s outline changes under this transformation, its essence remains the same\u2014it contains one hole. Thus, the quip goes, a topologist cannot tell the difference between the two things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new design for an optical fiber borrows concepts from topology to protect light from imperfections in the fiber\u2019s light-guiding materials or from distortions in its cross section. Using concepts from the mathematical field of topology, researchers at the University of Bath, UK, have designed an optical fiber that can robustly propagate light, even if [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,23,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-humor","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}