Researchers from the West Lafayette, Ind. have verified a technique for “temporal cloaking” of optical communications, indicating that it may now be possible to prevent probable eavesdropping and can improve the security of telecommunications.
Purdue University graduate student Joseph Lukens was working on the project with Andrew Weiner, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, mentioned that much still needs to be accomplished before temporal cloaking can make its way to practical applications. However, it is already showing a lot of potential since the technology it uses can easily be integrated in the existing telecommunications infrastructures.
In 2012 researchers discovered temporal cloaking, but it was able to cloak only a small fraction – around 10,000th of a percent – of the data sent using optical communications. Purdue researchers have found a way to increase that by as much as 46 percent, giving the concept more potential to break into commercial applications.
Previous studies in temporal cloaking made use of very complex “femtosecond” laser technology. Researchers from Purdue were able to achieve these using only common materials that are usually found in commercial optical communications. The findings were published in detail on the online journal Nature was written by Lukens, Weiner, and senior research scientist Daniel E. Leaird.
The technique the group used worked due to timing of light pulses called “phases”. The light transmission can be compared to ocean waves. If a wave goes up and interacts with another wave which goes down, they will cancel one another and the light will have zero intensity. The timing will then establish the level of interference among the waves.
Lukens explains that if you let the waves interfere with each other, they can add up to one or a zero. When you achieve a zero, it means that there is a hole where there is nothing. All data in a zero region can then be cloaked.
