Abstract
Transmission eigenchannels are building blocks of coherent wave transport in diffusive media, and selective excitation of individual eigenchannels can lead to diverse transport behaviour. An essential yet poorly understood property is the transverse spatial profile of each eigenchannel, which is relevant for the associated energy density and critical for coupling light into and out of it. Here, we discover that the transmission eigenchannels of a disordered slab possess exponentially localized incident and outgoing profiles, even in the diffusive regime far from Anderson localization. Such transverse localization arises from a combination of reciprocity, local coupling of spatial modes and non-local correlations of scattered waves. Experimentally, we observe signatures of such localization even with finite illumination area. The transverse localization of high-transmission channels enhances optical energy densities inside turbid media, which will be important for light—matter interactions and imaging applications.
Recommended Citation
H. Yılmaz et al., "Transverse Localization of Transmission Eigenchannels," Nature Photonics, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 352 - 358, Nature Publishing Group, May 2019.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0367-9
Department(s)
Physics
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
Keywords and Phrases
Photonics, Anderson localization; Building blockes; Diffusive regime; High transmission; Imaging applications; Selective excitations; Spatial profiles; Transport behaviour, Light transmission
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1749-4885; 1749-4893
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2019, This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply.
Publication Date
01 May 2019
Comments
The authors acknowledge financial support by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under grant no. MURI N00014-13-0649 and by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) under grant no. 2015509, as well as computational resources provided by the Yale High Performance Computing Cluster (Yale HPC).