Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Tiny and Tunable

The telecommunications industry has big plans to dramatically increase information-carrying capacity by using multiple colors of light in an optical fiber. Great idea, but its practicality depends on a laser that can be “tuned” to different wavelengths. Constance Chang-Hasnain, professor of electrical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, may have an answer.

A laser’s color can be changed by resizing its “resonant cavity”-the space in which photons bounce back and forth before emerging as a beam. In Chang-Hasnain’s device, a small increase in voltage causes a tiny cantilever arm to lower a mirror toward the chip-shrinking the resonant cavity and shortening the wavelength. The device can now be tuned across wavelengths spanning about 30 nanometers. Chang-Hasnain aims to triple that, making possible hundreds of separate communications channels.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.