ASME Greenville Section: Spinning Light Technology - Potential for Communication and Data Gathering

Description

Join the Greeville Section and Dr. R. J. (Joe) Watkins, Executive Director of the General Engineering Program at Clemson University, for a virtual presentation on January 28th! Top researchers from across the country are developing new technology to control an unusual property of light that could make it possible to channel through fog, murky water and thermal turbulence, potentially leading to new ways of communicating and gathering data. The research brings together researchers from six universities and is led by Eric Johnson, the PalmettoNet Endowed Chair in Optoelectronics at Clemson University and Joe Watkins, the Director of General Engineering at Clemson. The team has received a $7.5 million grant to fund the project through the Office of Naval Research’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).The research sharpens the focus on “orbital angular momentum,” a way of making light twist or spin in specific directions, even reversing course from clockwise to counterclockwise, or vice versa, as it travels from one point to another. This twisting and spinning light can move tiny bits of matter, such as the water molecules that create fog or the bits of material that make water cloudy. The idea is to use these properties in space and time to cut channels through cloudy air or water. Researchers are also studying how it could be possible to use the spinning light to push through thermal turbulence, the natural occurrence that makes it look as if waves are rising from a highway on a hot day. The channels could open a wide range of possibilities. It could be possible, for example, to send pulses of light through a channel to communicate, similar to how a fiber-optic cable carries information, except without the cable and at a much higher information flow rate.