Light focusing in the Anderson Regime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that adaptive optics can focus light within disordered optical fibers exhibiting Anderson localization, enabling efficient, propagation-invariant light trapping through wavefront shaping.

Contribution

It introduces a method to focus light in disordered fibers using wavefront shaping, exploiting Anderson localization for stable, invariant beam generation.

Findings

Wavefront shaping achieves focusing in Anderson regime fibers.

Disordered fibers enable more efficient focusing than standard fibers.

Anderson localizations can be excited by extended speckled beams.

Abstract

Anderson localization is a regime in which diffusion is inhibited and waves (also electromagnetic waves) get localized. Here we exploit adaptive optics to achieve focusing in disordered optical fibers in the Anderson regime. By wavefront shaping and optimization, we observe the generation of a propagation invariant beam, where light is trapped transversally by disorder, and show that Anderson localizations can be also excited by extended speckled beams. We demonstrate that disordered fibers allow a more efficient focusing action with respect to standard fibers in a way independent of their length, because of the propagation invariant features and cooperative action of transverse localizations.