Scattering correlations of time-gated light

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that selecting early arriving light and using temporal degrees of freedom significantly extend the spatial correlation range in scattering media, improving wavefront shaping for imaging applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to enhance the optical memory effect range by time-gating early arriving light, combining spectral and temporal control.

Findings

The correlation range for early arriving light is increased nearly fourfold.

Temporal degrees of freedom improve wavefront correction accuracy.

Enhanced correlation range benefits imaging through scattering media.

Abstract

Manipulating the propagation of light through scattering media remains a major challenge for many applications, including astronomy, biomedical imaging and colloidal optics. Wavefront shaping is one of the most promising ways to mitigate scattering and focus through inhomogeneous samples. However, wavefront correction remains accurate over only a limited spatial extent within the scattering medium - a correlation range referred to as the optical memory effect. Here, by selecting only the weakly scattered light for wavefront shaping, we show that the addition of temporal degrees of freedom enhances this correlation range. We investigate spatial scattering correlations by digitally time-gating the early arriving light in the spectral domain. We demonstrate that the range of the translational memory effect for the early arriving light is increased almost fourfold, paving the way for a range of scattering media imaging applications.