back to article Just a quickie, then: Boffins' 11 picosecond spontaneous emission

Boffins from Duke University reckon they've cracked one of the problems that holds back optical computing, with a tiny and very low-powered high-speed-switchable light source. Silicon photonics is making strides to replace copper for communications between chips – both Intel and IBM are on the bandwagon. However, within the …

  1. Schultz

    "They would also like to use electricity rather than light to excite the nanocube"

    And therein lies the catch: They excite a system containing quantum dots and silver nanoparticles with a 150 femtosecond laser. The laser pulse has extraordinarily high intensities (up to 10^7 W/(square cm)) and they get some light back out on the picosecond time scale. The emission time is some 2 orders of magnitude slower than the laser pulse duration.

    It is not clear at all how they want to electrically excite the system. Illuminating a controlled area with high intensity light is easy (if you have a >>10^5 $ laser), but getting the same amount of energy into the system electrically and within a few 100 femtoseconds is a completely different problem.

    So don't get your hopes up, somebody still has to crack a lot of hard problems before you can buy a 100 GHz optical computer.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It has rounded corners

    Just asking to get sued...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I find myself consistently agog.

    Every time I read the words I will never understand in one of these "Boffins make breakthrough in femto-wizardry" articles, I marvel at what science is doing and I wonder what the technological world will look like in 20 or 50 years' time.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thumbs up for the headline

    'nuff said :)

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