A new way to trap and twist light inside quasicrystals

Researchers have discovered how to stabilize twisted beams of light in engineered crystals, according to Physics World. The team modified quasicrystals—materials with ordered but non-repeating patterns—by introducing defects into a Penrose tiling structure. When vortex beams, or twisted light, pass through these altered materials, they maintain their shape as vortex solitons. Ordinarily these states are unstable, requiring precise input power and collapsing easily. But in these modified quasicrystals, they form robustly even with weak input and remain stable under disturbance. The significance: vortex beams can encode information through their twist, independent of intensity or color. Keeping these twisted beams stable as they travel means optical communication systems could transmit more data through a single channel—a meaningful efficiency gain for fiber optics.

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