Precise molecular fingerprinting on the fly

Electro-optic modulators, which can switch light on and off within just picoseconds, are enabling ever faster telecommunication over optical glass fibres, so that large movies can be streamed more smoothly across oceans into our homes. The same tools have now been harnessed for high-speed and accurate molecular sensing, as reported by an international collaboration around Dr. Nathalie Picqué, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, in a lette