Data Goes Unscathed Through Turbulent Air Using Light Topology

Researchers demonstrated a world-first method to transmit optical data through open air without distortion-correction hardware by encoding information in the light's topology using skyrmions. In real-world tests over hundreds of meters, the topologically encoded beams retained data with ~98% fidelity under normal conditions and about 86% under extreme turbulence, suggesting cheaper, more robust long-distance optical links and potential applications in space, satellite downlinks, and bridging the digital divide.