How to bend waves to arrive at the right place

Science Daily  June 24, 2019
Electronic matter waves traveling through the weak and smoothly varying disorder potential of a semiconductor show a characteristic branching behavior instead of a smooth spreading of flow. By transferring this phenomenon to optics, researchers at Harvard University demonstrated numerically, how the branched flow of light can be controlled to propagate along a single branch rather than along many of them at the same time. The method is based on shaping the incoming wavefront and only requires partial knowledge of the system’s transmission matrix. They show that the light flowing along a single branch has a broadband frequency stability such that one can even steer pulses along selected branches—a prospect with many interesting possibilities for wave control in disordered environments…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Illustration of the setup under study. Credit: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1905217116

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