Photonics - Microstructured Glass Adds New Dimension To Optical Fibres

New technology based on the use of microstructured glass, optical fibres can be made to offer new optical physics as well as to provide superior performance. Phenomenal progress was made in the 1970s and 80s using glass to form low-loss optical fibre wave guides that promised almost unlimited capacity for transmitting data. Since then, the ancillary equipment needed to build a modern high-speed optical data network has advanced rapidly. Now, future generations of optical fibre telecommunications networks that might use dense WDM at rates of 40Gb/s and beyond are limited by the performance of the transmission medium.