Wavefront shaping through a free-form scattering object

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that wavefront shaping effectively focuses light through free-form scattering objects, showing similar or better performance compared to traditional slab geometries, with potential industrial applications.

Contribution

It extends wavefront shaping techniques to free-form shapes and introduces a new performance metric for evaluating shape-dependent light control.

Findings

Wavefront shaping achieves comparable or better enhancement in free-form shapes.

A new figure of merit effectively evaluates shape-dependent wavefront shaping performance.

Wavefront shaping's applicability is validated for complex, non-slab geometries.

Abstract

Wavefront shaping is a technique to study and control light transport inside scattering media. Wavefront shaping is considered to be applicable to any complex material, yet in most previous studies, the only sample geometries that are studied are slabs or wave-guides. In this paper, we study how macroscopic changes in the sample shape affect light scattering using the wavefront shaping technique. Using a flexible scattering material, we optimize the intensity of light in a focusing spot using wavefront shaping and record the optimized pattern, comparing the enhancement for different curvatures and beam radii. We validate our hypothesis that wavefront shaping has a similar enhancement regardless of the free-form shape of the sample and thus offers relevant potential for industrial applications. We propose a new figure of merit to evaluate the performance of wavefront shaping for different shapes. Surprisingly, based on this figure of merit, we observe that for this particular sample, wavefront shaping has a slightly better performance for a free-form shape than for a slab shape.