Engineers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a technique to optically modulate the frequency of a laser beam and create a signal that is disrupted significantly less by environmental factors, says Dr. Rainer Martini.

The research provides for enhanced optical communications, allowing mobile units not tied to fiber optic cable to communicate in the range of 100 GHz and beyond, the equivalent of 100 gigabytes of data per second. Eventually, the team hopes to extend the reach into the terahertz spectrum.

The frequency or amplitude modulation of middle infrared quantum cascade lasers has been limited by electronics, which are barely capable of accepting frequencies of up to 10 GHz by switching a signal on and off.  Marini and his team have developed a method to optically induce fast amplitude modulation in a quantum cascade laser to control the laser’s intensity. Their amplitude modulation system employed a second laser to modulate the amplitude of the middle infrared laser, using light to control light.

The current detector is only capable of detecting frequencies up to 10 GHz, but Dr. Martini is confident that a new detector will make the system capable of much higher frequencies.

With an optical system that is stable enough, satellites may one day convert to laser technology, resulting in a more mobile military and super-sensitive scanners, as well as faster Internet for the masses, says Martini.

Ref.: “Optically induced fast wavelength modulation in a quantum cascade laser,” Applied Physics Letters, July 7, 2010.