Scientists have developed an ‘atomic television’ that uses lasers and atomic clouds to carry a video signal that meets the traditional 480i resolution standard (480 horizontal lines).
Just don’t expect it to be installed as part of your home entertainment setup anytime soon.
The key to the technology is a glass container of large gaseous rubidium atoms that are excited by two colors of laser beams known as Rydberg states, which occur when the atoms have a high energy level, allowing the electrons to orbit. away from the nucleus. .
This, in turn, makes the atoms larger and more diffuse, and also makes them more sensitive to electromagnetic fields, so they can be used as receivers for television signals. Researchers had previously done a similar trick with radio signals.
“We figured out how to transmit and receive video using Rydberg atom sensors,” says Chris Holloway, an electrical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US.
“Basically, we encode [a] video game into a signal and detect it with atoms. The output is sent directly to the TV.”
A cloud of atoms is first generated using a radio signal. Its effect on energy changes in Rydberg atoms is measured and used as a reference point. An articulating source is then added to modulate the original signal and transmitted through the horn antenna.
By analyzing one of the laser beams as it passes through the atoms, scientists extract the signal from the object and convert it into a form suitable for display. The setup was first tested using feeds from a video camera and video game console.
For the system to succeed, the team had to get the size of the laser beam right. As the beam size changes, so does the laser light spend interacting with atoms, which then affects the bandwidth of the item stream.
By reconfiguring the lasers, the receivers can be quickly adapted to receive audio and video signals.
“You don’t need to replace any electronic components or use a different plug,” physicist Amita Deb of the University of Otago in New Zealand told New Scientist.
