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arXiv · 2210.06942

Harvesting Planck radiation for free-space optical communications in the LWIR band

Haley A. Weinstein·Zhi Cai·Stephen B. Cronin·Jonathan L. Habif
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Abstract

We demonstrate a free-space optical communication link with an optical transmitter that harvests naturally occurring Planck radiation from a warm body and modulates the emitted intensity. The transmitter exploits an electro-thermo-optic effect in a multilayer graphene device that electrically controls the surface emissivity of the device resulting in control of the intensity of the emitted Planck radiation. We design an amplitude-modulated optical communication scheme and provide a link budget for communications data rate and range based on our experimental electro-optic characterization of the transmitter. Finally, we present an experimental demonstration achieving error-free communications at 100 bits per second over laboratory scales.

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Haley A. Weinstein, Zhi Cai, Stephen B. Cronin, Jonathan L. Habif. 2022-09-22. Harvesting Planck radiation for free-space optical communications in the LWIR band. https://doi.org/10.1364/ol.476394

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