By Jaspreet Kaur, Technical Intern, Optii Corp
The past few weeks have been a great learning experience for me by working closely with team members at Optii and the team at INRS. I have been learning about the core principle and components of Optii’s technology and how each component comes together to function as an Optical NAND, NOR, AND or an OR Gate. I learnt that Optii’s Technology uses Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) as a key working principle for signal transmission in optical fibers which is a favourable underlying mechanism in most fiber-based devices used for both sensing and telecommunication applications. My understanding of SBS as a process is that it occurs when dense beams of laser light traveling in optical fibers induces acoustic vibrations in the medium via radiation pressure, a phenomenon known as electrostriction.
Through further researching into the ways to generate SBS, I found that an intense laser beam, a pump wave and scattering due to thermally generated acoustic waves in the optical medium are suffice. The incident laser beam, the pump wave and the acoustic waves can also be tuned to transmit data through optical fibers in the form of logical NAND, NOR and NOT gates also called optical or photonic gates. SBS is although a non linear process and demands intense external beam to occur. I think that this can prove to be expensive for signal transmission over long distances.
My next goal is to stimulate condition in which the non-linear NOT gate in Optii’s ecosystem can be replaced with a linear NOT gate developed by Prof. Jose’e team to reduce attenuation in signal transmission. I feel that this process could significantly boost the data transfer speed with Optii’s technology. I am eager and looking forward to this exciting discovery.