Month: September 2018

Random media with tailored optical properties are attracting burgeoning interest for applications in imaging, biophysics, energy, nanomedicine, spectroscopy, cryptography and telecommunications.
A key paradigm for devices based on this class of materials is the transmission matrix, the tensorial link between the input and the output signals, that describes in full their optical behavior. The transmission matrix has specific statistical properties, as the existence of lossless channels, that can be used to transmit information, and are determined by the disorder distribution. In nonlinear materials, these channels may be modulated and the transmission matrix tuned accordingly. Here we
report the direct measurement of the nonlinear transmission matrix of complex materials, exploiting the strong optothermal nonlinearity of scattering Silica Aerogel (SA). We show that the dephasing effects due to nonlinearity are both controllable and reversible, opening the road to applications based on the nonlinear response of random media.

A. Fleming, C. Conti, A. Di Falco, arXiv:1809.07077

MRS Fall : Tailored Disorder

11 February 2018

We are announcing the Tailored Disorder Symposium at the MRS (Material Research Society) Fall Meeting 2018 Disorder and perturbed periodicity in materials are in the process of becoming a vital research area that has started to show that optical media do not necessarily have to be regular. Photonic materials with deliberately introduced disorder in their respective geometries and compositions show interesting novel and tunable unforeseen properties. So far, countable scientific achievements have been reported in the areas of biology, materials science, nano-optics and -photonics that, however, already point towards a wealth of interesting effects with several applicative dimensions.

Quantum Gravity Slingshot

10 May 2018

Modified uncertainty principle and non-commutative variables may phenomenologically account for quantum gravity effects, independently of the considered theory of quantum gravity. We show that quantum fluids enable experimental analogs and direct tests of the modified uncertainty principle expected to be valid at the Planck scale. We consider a quantum clock realized by a long-lasting quantum fluid wave-packet orbiting in a trapping potential.

Month: September 2018

Topological machine learning paper published

Nonlinear transmission matrix of random optical media