Long-Range Fiber Transmission of Optical Vortices

We use specialty fiber (“vortex fiber”), to create and propagate orbital angular momentum states over ~kilometer lengths in telecom band (~1550nm). The spiral phase structure of the vortex beams was confirmed by interference with a Gaussian reference. This result is an important step toward achieving long-range classical and quantum communication links using orbital angular momentum of light.

Simple Load Balancing for Distributed Hash Tables

Distributed hash tables have recently become a useful building block for a variety of distributed applications. However, current schemes based upon consistent hashing require both considerable implementation complexity and substantial storage overhead to achieve desired load balancing goals. We argue in this paper that these goals can b e achieved more simply and more cost-effectively. First, we suggest the direct application of the "power of two choices" paradigm, whereby an item is stored at the less loaded of two (or more) random alternatives. We then consider how associating a small constant number of hash values with a key can naturally b e extended to support other load balancing methods, including load-stealing or load-shedding schemes, as well as providing natural fault-tolerance mechanisms.