Coiled Beams Of Light Send 100 Terabits Per Second Through The Air

Brings a whole new meaning to "twisted pair".

Wait, how can you make light travel in coils in air? Even if you can, how will the longer path of the coil (compared to straight) speed up the transfer? Something seems twisted here.

I think that what they are getting at is that you can send multiple, non-interfering beams at the same time, moving more data in parallel.

You are correct, light can't travel in coils (unless you use a coiled fiber optic); as Rixter says in post #3, it must be some kind of parallel transmision, which increases the data transfer density.

It can't be thru the air, unless they build a massive and complex apparatus for defflection of the light beams all the way from emitter to transmitter (yes like a particle accelerator, exept that "coiled").

If it was "thru the air" they wouldn't need to develop that misterious new cable that can carry the light, right?.

I hate when scientific journalists treat the comunity as aborigins that will exclaim with awe at the sight of a mirror.

They already use multi-mode fiber-optic cable so (multiple lasers each with a different color so that multiple data streams don't interfere with each other) if they can figure out how to combine multimode in the same cable with "coiling" the light beams...! That adds a whole extra dimension to this concept.

Of course then they still have to get the software services to keep up with transmission speeds. And spread the technology past the internet backbone level to the ISPs.... Even with how fast the science behind the technology improves, it is still a GINORMOUS infrastructure job to string replacements for existing fiber cables.

Wait a momentum !

I hadn't reviewed the information from your links, thanks, very enlightening. I learned how you can transmit at different orbital angular momentums within the same beam, in fact I'm surprised that they didn't exploit the technique decades ago.

But still, is not the beam which is twisted, but its waveform (trying to rescue a bit from my post #5).

P.S. Didn't know that Maxwell was working on this too.

As far as I know, it's just been a laboratory curiosity. I had never heard of it before reading about the Italian experiment. They didn't cover that in EM theory back in college many moons ago. I don't know if there is a technological reason why it has not been exploited. It looks pretty simple to make a reflector dish with a discontinuity.

It still gives me a headache trying to visualize what is going on!

GA Rixter. I had heard of such polarizations, but didn't know how they were generated.