Photonic wire puts Australian optics on the map

'Photonic wire' that can guide light beams in the way copper wire guides electronics has won for its inventor the 2004 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year.

Prof Benjamin Eggleton, from the University of Sydney, says the wire promises a revolution in computing by boosting the speed and efficiency of communication networks and the internal circuitry of future microchips.

By allowing information to be delivered much faster and cheaper and by reducing both power consumption and heat generation in computing, the wire could usher in an era of real-time 3D telesurgery in hospitals, high-definition cinema-on-demand via cable and even cheap but superfast disposable computers.

"This is the Holy Grail of communications," said Eggleton, a professor of physics and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. "It's a major worldwide effort, and Australia's leading in this area. It's not something that's going to happen tomorrow, it's going to take five or 10 years. But we're taking the first steps."

"If you get rid of all the electronics between chips, you've got no heat, very little power consumption and you've got no need for banks of ait conditioners [to keep computers from overheating]," Eggleton said. "Eventually you can use photonic wires between the processors themselves, allowing huge quantities of data to be sent and processed," he said.

"Ultimately, if we can solve these issues - and we believe optics will - we can transform society," said Eggleton, who is research director of the Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), an ARC Centre of Excellence.

The wire is 100 times smaller than existing optical fibre - itself the width of a strand of human hair - and invisible to the eye. The wire, roughly the size of the wavelength of visible light, carries photons (or light) and is the basic building block of photonic circuitry and likely to replace today's electronic circuitry in the future.

The wire was made by tapering down optical fibre by over a factor of 100 using a flame-brushing technique.