Bath lights the way

Photonic crystal fibre’s ability to create broad spectra of light has been explained by researchers from Bath University, opening the way for developments in various technologies.

The fibre can create a supercontinuum, where a pulse of light with a narrow range of wavelengths is changed into a spectrum hundreds of times broader and ranging from visible light to the infra-red.

According to researchers, this effect could have potential in a range of technologies. In telecommunications optical systems could be hundreds of times more efficient as signals could be transmitted and processed at many wavelengths simultaneously.

Dr Dmitry Skryabin and Dr Andrey Gorbach, of the Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials in the Department of Physics, found that this generation of light across the visible spectrum was caused by an interaction between conventional pulses of lights and special light waves, called solitons, that maintain their shape as they travel down the fibre.