Space communication with silent amplifiers

In the new communication system from researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, a weak optical signal (red) from the spacecraft's transmitter can be amplified noisefree when it encounters two so-called pump waves (blue and green) of different frequencies in a receiver on Earth.

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Thanks to the researchers' noise-free amplifiers in the receiver, the signal is kept undisturbed and the reception on Earth becomes record-sensitive, which in turn paves the way for a more error-free and faster data transmission in space in the future (Credit: Chalmers University of Technology, Rasmus Larsson).