Number 31 (Story #3), April 26, 1991 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein SQUEEZED SOLITONS may someday facilitate nearly error-free data transmission at bit rates of 10 Gbits per second or more. Solitons, waves that can propagate long distances (in some tests, more than 10,000 km) without changing their shape, may soon be used in optical fiber communications across the Pacific. But solitons, if properly "squeezed," may also be useful for high-speed transmissions over short distances, in computers, for instance. In the squeezed-light phenomenon, the passing of light waves through a nonlinear optical medium can result in a lowering of the quantum noise of one observable (say, the peak intensity, which is related to the light's amplitude) at the expense of an increase in the quantum noise of the conjugate observable, in this case the wave's phase. The squeezed observable can therefore carry information at a lowered error-rate. Tests by Michael Rosenbluth and Robert Shelby (408-927-2423) at IBM Almaden using 200-fs soliton pulses have demonstrated (Physical Review Letters, 14 Jan. 1991) a noise reduction of 32% below the "shot noise," the lowest possible noise normally allowed by quantum mechanics. Higher noise reductions have been achieved in previous squeezing experiments, but not with solitons and not in optical fibers. Even greater levels of noise reduction are theoretically possible with the soliton approach. (Physics World, April 1991.)