Scientists Shoot Twisted Light Waves Across Outdoor Vienna (VIDEO)

In the city of Vienna, above rooftops and buildings, beams of light were shot into the sky. Now, scientists have announced that they successfully transmitted twisted light over a large distance outdoors for the very first time. This could enable researchers to take advantage of the significant data-carrying capacity of light in both classical and quantum communications.

Previous research has shown that if a beam of a certain color of light is twisted into a corkscrew shape, the number of channels that data can be transmitted through can be drastically increased. Instead of using one wavelength of light as one channel of communication, the light can be theoretically twisted with an infinite number of turns, with each configuration acting as a single communication channel.

The twisting characteristic of light is known as orbital angular momentum (OAM). This property has been exploited by researchers in the past, and scientists have previously shown that it can be used to transmit 2.5 terabits of data per second through an optical fiber. Yet these fibers are not always suitable or available for certain types of communication, such as Earth to satellite communications. That's why scientists have been trying to send twisted light over free space.

In this case, the researchers sent 16 different twisted configurations of a specific wavelength of light to a receiver about three km away at the University of Vienna. A camera was used to capture the beams of light and an artificial neural network was deployed to reveal the pattern and remove any possible disturbances from air turbulence.

"We have shown for the first time that information can be encoded into twisted light and sent through a three km intra-city link with strong turbulences," said Mario Krenn, co-author of the new study, in a news release.

The findings could be huge in terms of data transfer and communications.

The findings are published in the New Journal of Physics.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.