Photonics set to revolutionise the revolution

The new photonic wire is 100 times smaller than existing optical fibre, which is itself the width of a strand of human hair. It is also invisible to the naked eye and roughly the size of the wavelength of visible light.

The wire was made by tapering down optical fibre by over a factor of 100 using a novel flame brushing technique. Microstructured optical fibres contain air holes to isolate photons, creating an internal 'jacket' that provides robustness and isolation from dust.

Professor Eggleton's passion for photonics started at 19, during his physics degree at the University of Sydney. An interest in astronomy gave him the chance to work on the optical systems on the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer telescope at Narrabri.

The next step was a PhD and internship at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey - home to several Nobel Laureates and many of the major communications inventions of the 20th century. His PhD complete, he was invited back to Bell Laboratories by Lucent.

Soon he was leading a team of 25 researchers in developing a host of optical devices that were being developed for the communications industry. Just one of his inventions - a "tuneable dispersion compensator" dramatically improved the carrying capacity of long range optical cables - and eliminated a $100 million bottleneck for Lucent.

He was then brought back to Australia by the lure of a Federation Fellowship and the Australian research Council funded CUDOS to work on photonic technology problems.

"Ultimately, if we can solve these issues - and we believe optics will - we can transform society," said Eggleton. "It's a major worldwide effort, and Australia's leading in this area. It's not something that's going to happen tomorrow, it's going to take five to ten years.

But we're taking the first steps." The result will be as hard to imagine now as today's globally networked communications system would have been at the birth of computers in the 1940s. But thanks to photonics, the future of computing is again looking bright. Further information regarding the work of CUDOS can be found online at: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/cudos/