Shaping the branched flow of light through disordered media

Abstract

Electronic matter waves traveling through the weak and smoothly varying disorder potential of a semiconductor show a characteristic branching behavior instead of a smooth spreading of flow. By transferring this phenomenon to optics, we demonstrate numerically how the branched flow of light can be controlled to propagate along a single branch rather than along many of them at the same time. Our method is based on shaping the incoming wavefront and only requires partial knowledge of the system’s transmission matrix. We show that the light flowing along a single branch has a broadband frequency stability such that one can even steer pulses along selected branches—a prospect with many interesting possibilities for wave control in disordered environments.