{"id":244953,"date":"2026-10-06T01:41:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/lightsaber-like-plasma-antenna-uses-laser-ionized-air-to-transmit-radio-waves"},"modified":"2026-10-06T01:41:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:41:53","slug":"lightsaber-like-plasma-antenna-uses-laser-ionized-air-to-transmit-radio-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/lightsaber-like-plasma-antenna-uses-laser-ionized-air-to-transmit-radio-waves","title":{"rendered":"Lightsaber-like plasma antenna uses laser-ionized air to transmit radio waves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/lightsaber-like-plasma-antenna-uses-laser-ionized-air-to-transmit-radio-waves.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers have demonstrated a technique that uses a laser to produce a plasma beam antenna capable of transmitting radio waves. The article, \u201cLaser-Induced-Plasma-Filament Antenna Transmitting 30 MHz VHF,\u201d is <a href=\"https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/document\/11674160\/\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the IEEE Journal of Microwaves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe plasma beam antenna looks like a lightsaber and is tunable, meaning we should be able to transmit across a broad range of frequencies,\u201d says Prya Darshni, corresponding author and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. \u201cAnd while we have not demonstrated its ability to serve as an antenna that can receive radio signals, there\u2019s no reason to believe it wouldn\u2019t also work as a receiver.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is an exciting new concept that enables one to be able to have a customized antenna without complex mechanical deployment mechanisms,\u201d says Paul Franzon, co-author of the paper and the Cirrus Logic distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have demonstrated a technique that uses a laser to produce a plasma beam antenna capable of transmitting radio waves. The article, \u201cLaser-Induced-Plasma-Filament Antenna Transmitting 30 MHz VHF,\u201d is published in the IEEE Journal of Microwaves. \u201cThe plasma beam antenna looks like a lightsaber and is tunable, meaning we should be able to transmit across [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244953","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=244953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}