updated 04:40 pm EST, Fri March 9, 2012 Findings could lead to
1,000-times faster 4G A research team at the University of
Pittsburgh has come up with a way to increase wireless data
transmission speeds by a factor of thousands. Headed up by
Hrvoje Petek, a physics and chemistry professor at the
University's Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, the team has
reportedly created a "frequency comb" that includes over 100THz
(terahertz) of bandwidth. It does so by "exciting a coherent
collective of atomic motions in a semiconductor silicon
crystal." In other words, it divides a single color of light
into a series of evenly spaced spectral lines. During their
experiments, the team witnessed reflected light oscillating at
15.6THz. In theory, this finding could one day allow smartphones
and computers to transmit data in the terahertz frequency range.
That electromagnetic spectrum sits between infrared and
microwave light. Modern devices are restricted to gigahertz
frequency bandwidth signals. The team used silicon fo