Symmetry-Empowered Through-Barrier Sensing in Complex Media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that symmetry-induced transmission enhancement can be used for quantitative sensing across barriers in complex media, enabling potential through-wall imaging applications.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetry-empowered sensing principle that leverages broadband transmission to recover unknown scatterer characteristics across barriers.

Findings

Maximizing broadband transmission recovers unknown scatterers' features.

Narrowband resonances can overshadow symmetry effects, requiring broadband approaches.

Absorption and barrier opacity affect the minimum bandwidth needed for reliable sensing.

Abstract

Symmetry strongly impacts wave transport in complex media. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the phenomenon of symmetry-induced through-barrier transmission enhancement enables quantitative sensing across barriers in complex media. We consider two mirror-symmetric chaotic cavities coupled through a narrow slit and containing point scatterers at mirror-symmetric positions. The characteristics of the scatterers in one cavity are unknown, whereas those of the scatterers in the other cavity are programmable. By tuning the programmable scatterers to maximize broadband total transmission, we recover the unknown scatterers' characteristics across the barrier. We show that reliable sensing requires a sufficiently large bandwidth, because otherwise a narrowband asymmetric resonant enhancement can dominate over the desired symmetry-induced enhancement. We further examine how absorption and barrier opacity influence the minimum required bandwidth. Our results establish a symmetry-empowered principle for through-barrier sensing in complex media, suggesting a route toward through-wall imaging in complex environments.