If you freeze liquid in a tiny tube, you can use it to store computer data 100 times better than the tech we have now.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Giant Brillouin gain in frozen CS2 capillaries
arXiv · 2603.25472
The Takeaway
By filling an optical fiber with liquid carbon disulfide and then freezing it, scientists created a system that traps sound and light waves much more effectively. This 'frozen capillary' technique allows for storing data as physical vibrations using two orders of magnitude less energy than previous state-of-the-art methods.
From the abstract
Stimulated Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering offers exceptional capabilities for photonic signal processing, but current platforms demand performance trade-offs between long interaction lengths, high gain, low optical losses, and practical implementation. Here, we demonstrate a novel platform based on the reversible freezing of a carbon disulfide filled liquid-core optical fiber. This approach delivers a giant in-fiber Brillouin gain of 434 W-1m-1 with a linewidth of 24 MHz, while maintaining low