Hi Reddit, I am Paramita Pal, researcher at the University of Bath. My research focuses on improving signals for the future mobile communications. I create optical fibres for high-speed internet and other mobile communications. It sounds serious, ...

I joined the University of Bath in January 2023. During my Ph.D., I worked with ultrafast lasers with pulse duration in the range of femtosecond (1 quadrillionth of a second) to improve light amplification in materials/optical fibres that we use for internet and other communications.

Although the work seems intense and difficult, it is exciting. I spend long hours in the lab making useful materials to achieve faster internet. Using glass capillaries of different diameters and following our designs, we can prepare fibres using our fibre facility in a two-stage process. These are known as hollow core fibres and have advantages over regular fibres.

When the fibre is filled up with vapour using some equipment at the University of Bath, it will be used for the next generation of mobile communications. This would be huge impact for our day-to-day lives as we are living in the era where lots of data traffic occurs. These new fibres could allow us to download videos or stream faster than we could imagine!

I would like to answer and explain the questions on the fibre-optics, ultrafast lasers, how the fabrication works and how we are going to improve data transmission, please Ask Me Anything!

I’ll be online to answer questions on Wednesday 4 October, 2.30 - 3.30pm BST.

Proof: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uniofbath/53204218182/in/dateposted/

Comments: 27 • Responses: 3  • Date: 

place_artist4 karma

What are your favorite practical applications of ultrafast internet?

ParamitaPal5 karma

Hi there, thank you for the question. I am working with some industry project so we would like to use it for faster data in case of mobile network and future quantum networks.

Annual-Mud-9873 karma

Hi Paramita, this sounds really interesting. Thanks for doing an AMA. Why do you need to fill up the fibres with vapour? And will vapour filled fibres be faster than current fibres we use for internet?

ParamitaPal5 karma

Hi there, thank you for the question. We are working on the hollow-core fibre which has potential for fast propagation speed over conventional fibre due to low nonlinear response. Also we would like to use the different conditions we can create when filled up with vapour. The fibres would provide benefits for faster mobile communications.

solidstatecomp1 karma

What types of current cables would most benefit from your research? Like is this really useful for under sea cables?

How does your research eventually come to market?

ParamitaPal1 karma

Hi there, thank you for the question. I do not think this would be useful for under sea cable. It would be attractive for quantum physics experiments and telecommunication industry.