The device, created by a team at the University of Central Florida (UCF), converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitors convert a patient’s heartbeat into electrical oscillation.
Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because of the high speeds at which light waves oscillate, researchers have said.
The most advanced techniques, which power our phone and internet communications, can currently clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies – covering the radio frequency and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Light waves oscillate at much higher rates, allowing a higher density of information to be transmitted. But the current tools for measuring light fields could resolve only an average signal associated with a ‘pulse’ of light and not the peaks and valleys within the pulse.
Experts say measuring those peaks and valleys within a single pulse is important because it is...