Coherent wave control in complex media with arbitrary wavefronts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to control wave propagation in complex media by doping disordered materials with programmable meta-atoms, enabling arbitrary wavefront shaping without precise incident wavefronts, demonstrated experimentally with electromagnetic waves.

Contribution

It presents a new approach using programmable metasurfaces to adapt disordered media for arbitrary wavefront control, simplifying implementation and expanding application possibilities.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration with electromagnetic waves in a chaotic cavity

Achieved focusing and coherent perfect absorption using the new method

Enabled sequential functionalities with the same arbitrary wavefront

Abstract

Wavefront shaping (WFS) has emerged as powerful tool to control the propagation of diverse wave phenomena (light, sound, microwaves, ...) in disordered matter for applications including imaging, communication, energy transfer, micromanipulation, and scattering anomalies. Nonetheless, in practice the necessary coherent control of multiple input channels remains a vexing problem. Here, we overcome this difficulty by doping the disordered medium with programmable meta-atoms in order to adapt it to an imposed arbitrary incoming wavefront. Besides lifting the need for carefully shaped incident wavefronts, our approach also unlocks new opportunities such as sequentially achieving different functionalities with the same arbitrary wavefront. We demonstrate our concept experimentally for electromagnetic waves using programmable metasurfaces in a chaotic cavity, with applications to focusing with the generalized Wigner-Smith operator as well as coherent perfect absorption. We expect our fundamentally new perspective on coherent wave control to facilitate the transition of intricate WFS protocols into real applications for various wave phenomena.