Jeff Kagan is a nice fellow, but he self-admittedly is not a photonics guy. Given the complexity of the SilkRoad technology -- and it (and SilkRoad's baffling explanations) are very complex -- his opinion is worth darn close to zero.
Instead, what he is saying what everyone else is saying: If it works, it will be great. That's true, but it's also entirely unhelpful.
A while back I was doing some research on SilkRoad and I got a photonics expert at a top university involved. While what he wrote me was private, I don't think he'd mind me sharing some general comments on one the company's central research papers:
- the problem is not well defined; it appears to be something to do with the design of an optical modulator that accepts light from a polarization maintaining (PM) input fiber
- the problem outlined above is straightforward. It does not throw into doubt the fundamental equations of physics, as the author implies, nor does it require some re-interpretation of dearly held physical concepts.
- the paper is full of mistakes, conceptual difficulties, etc. For example, the modulation of an optical beam is through the electro-optic effect, and is proportional to the electric field, not the magnetic field, as he states
- the paper would have zero chance of being accepted in any of the reputable optics journals, for example the Journal of the Optical Society of America.
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