{"id":163311,"date":"2023-05-04T01:22:19","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T06:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/experiment-demonstrates-continuously-operating-optical-fiber-made-of-thin-air"},"modified":"2023-05-04T01:22:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T06:22:19","slug":"experiment-demonstrates-continuously-operating-optical-fiber-made-of-thin-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/experiment-demonstrates-continuously-operating-optical-fiber-made-of-thin-air","title":{"rendered":"Experiment demonstrates continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/experiment-demonstrates-continuously-operating-optical-fiber-made-of-thin-air2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Great, until the mention of \u201cdirected energy\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have demonstrated a continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air.<\/p>\n<p>The most common optical fibers are strands of glass that tightly confine light over long distances. However, these fibers are not well-suited for guiding extremely high-power <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/laser\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">laser<\/a> beams due to glass damage and scattering of laser energy out of the fiber. Additionally, the need for a physical support structure means that glass fiber must be laid down long in advance of light signal transmission or collection.<\/p>\n<p>Howard Milchberg and his group in UMD\u2019s Departments of Physics and Electrical &amp; Computer Engineering and Institute for Research in Electronics &amp; Applied Physics have demonstrated an optical guiding method that beats both limitations, using auxiliary ultrashort laser pulses to sculpt fiber optic waveguides in the air itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great, until the mention of \u201cdirected energy\u201d\u2026 Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have demonstrated a continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air. The most common optical fibers are strands of glass that tightly confine light over long distances. However, these fibers are not well-suited for guiding extremely high-power laser beams due to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,38,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-engineering","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163311","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\/677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}