Optical transmission matrix as a probe of the photonic interaction strength

TL;DR

This paper shows that optical transmission matrices can effectively measure the photonic interaction strength in disordered media, providing a surface-effect independent method validated by experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using transmission matrix statistics to determine photonic interaction strength, independent of surface effects, in complex disordered media.

Findings

TM statistics are insensitive to surface effects

Photonic interaction strength can be extracted from TM data

Experimental and simulation results agree with the model

Abstract

We demonstrate that optical transmission matrices (TM) of disordered complex media provide a powerful tool to extract the photonic interaction strength, independent of surface effects. We measure TM of strongly scattering GaP nanowires and plot the singular value density of the measured matrices and a random matrix model. By varying the free parameters of the model, the transport mean free path and effective refractive index, we retrieve the photonic interaction strength. From numerical simulations we conclude that TM statistics is hardly sensitive to surface effects, in contrast to enhanced backscattering or total transmission based methods.