Optical Device Tunes Light One Photon at a Time

Stanford University researchers developed an optical device that enables the fine-tuning and changing of frequencies of individual photons in a stream of light, to virtually any mixture of colors. The new photonic architecture has potential applications and large implications for fields ranging from digital communications and artificial intelligence to quantum computing. The structure consists of a low-loss wire for light, which acts as a sort of highway, with the photons being analogous to cars. The photons then enter a series of rings, similar to off-ramps in a highway cloverleaf. Each ring has a modulator that transforms the frequency of the passing photons. The device can be designed with as many rings as desired, and engineers...