Laser-Based Memory Could Be 1,000 Times Faster

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new approach to data storage that uses light instead of traditional magnetic fields. Published in Nature Communications, the research shows how precisely shaping and shrinking an ultrafast laser beam can switch magnetic states in a material—the process used to write digital data.

Writing data with light

Modern hard drives store information by applying external magnetic fields to tiny regions, a process that can be energy-intensive and relatively slow. The UC San Diego team has demonstrated an alternative called optical switching, which uses brief bursts of light focused on very small areas.

According to the researchers, this method could operate more than 1,000 times faster than conventional magnetic switching techniques.

“The smaller the size of the beam, the smaller and more dense the optical memory,” said study senior author Abdoulaye Ndao, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Redesigning the light

Rather than creating an entirely new material, the team redesigned the light itself. This change revealed previously unknown properties and could help enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient memory devices.

Such advances could be increasingly important as artificial intelligence and cloud computing place greater demands on global data infrastructure.

Source: ScienceDaily — UC San Diego, October 27, 2026