Scattering optical elements: stand-alone optical elements exploiting multiple light scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces scattering optical elements (SOEs) that utilize multiple light scattering and wavefront shaping with disordered media and a wavefront recorder, enabling versatile manipulation of light properties without fabricating traditional optical components.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel stand-alone SOE design that exploits disordered media and wavefront shaping to control light properties, offering a new approach beyond conventional optical fabrication methods.

Findings

Demonstrated control over light intensity, polarization, spectral frequency, and near field.

Validated the effectiveness of SOEs in manipulating various optical properties.

Showcased the potential for unexplored optical manipulation routes using disordered media.

Abstract

Optical design and fabrication techniques are crucial for making optical elements. From conventional lenses to diffractive optical elements, and to recent metasurfaces, various types of optical elements have been proposed to manipulate light where optical materials are fabricated into desired structures. Here, we propose a scattering optical element (SOE) which exploits multiple light scattering and wavefront shaping. Instead of fabricating optical materials, the SOE consists of a disordered medium and a photopolymer-based wavefront recorder, with shapes the wavefront of impinging light on demand. With the proposed stand-alone SOEs, we experimentally demonstrate control of various properties of light, including intensity, polarisation, spectral frequency and near field. Due to the tremendous freedom brought about by disordered media, the proposed approach will provide unexplored routes to manipulate arbitrary optical fields in stand-alone optical elements.