Professor Andy H. Kung from the Institutes of Photonics Technologies (IPT) and his research team are leading the world in the race to discover a successful method to manipulate the "optical light field." This method is analogous to existing microwave or radio wave technology that allows the modulation of various electromagnetic waves, but would also allow manipulation within the optical frequency range. This breakthrough has been published in a top international journal, Science, with an online edition in Science Express on January 20, 2011.

To explain the concept, Professor Kung used function generator as an example. It is widely used in various fields of scientific research, industrial R&D and in the production of electrical and electronic equipment. Existing function generators are limited by the speed of their circuitry, which only allows synthesis of waveforms between microwaves and radio waves. As the speed of a photon is much faster than that of an electron, the development of an "optical function generator" is of particular interest in ultrafast electronics, communications, nanoelectronics, nanomaterials and other fields. Therefore, the development of such technology has become one of the hottest research projects in the field of physics.

Generally, communication traffic volume depends on the transmission signal frequency; higher frequency allows more data transmission. Professor Kung noted that scientists have long relied on electronic circuits to control signals, but such circuits cannot control signal frequencies at optical levels. After a decade of effort, Professor Kung and his research team are now able to produce different optical waveforms by processing new wave frequencies via molecular vibrations and then further modulating the amplitude and phase of lasers with liquid crystals. In the future, such arbitrary optical waveforms could be applied in optical communications.

"We have developed an optical waveform synthesizer that ensures further development of nanoelectronics, nanomaterials, terahertz electronics and other research fields," says Dr. Kung. The breakthrough developments based on this research provide scientists the opportunity to create a waveform synthesizer for full optical spectrum. In the future, light waves could be used to replace radio wave and microwave technologies, increasing data transmission a thousand times.