The DarkComb project follows a new direction of research into reliable microresonator combs is being conducted at Chalmers university of Technology through an ERC consolidator grant.
The DarkComb project aims to substantially increase the capacity in light wave communication systems through the merger of space division multiplexing (SDM) and microresonator frequency combs to make significant scaling advantages in future fibre-optic communications and beyond.
They propose to generate and use dark temporal solitons, rather than light, in linearly coupled microresonators to overcome poor conversion efficiency to revolutionise the fields of frequency synthesis and metrology thus creating new mass-market applications. With Internet traffic pushing the capacity of single-mode fibre to its limits this presents a potential solution to increase the capacity of light wave communication systems.