Threading light through dynamic complex media

• Published in: Nature photonics Vol. 19; no. 4; pp. 434 - 440
• Main Authors: Mididoddi, Chaitanya K., Kilpatrick, Robert J., Sharp, Christina, del Hougne, Philipp, Horsley, Simon A. R., Phillips, David B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.04.2025; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/624/1075/1076; 639/624/1107/510; 639/925/930/2735; Acoustics; Applied and Technical Physics; Complex media; Control systems; Engineering Sciences; Light; Microwaves; Optics; Optimization; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Physics; Scattering; Stable channels; Tissues; Wave fronts; Imaging techniques; Adaptive optics; Imaging and sensing
• ISSN: 1749-4885; 1749-4893
• DOI: 10.1038/s41566-025-01642-z

The dynamic scattering of light impacts sensing and communication technologies throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Here we introduce a new way to control the propagation of light through time-varying complex media. Our strategy is based on the observation that in many dynamic scattering systems, some parts of the medium will change configuration more slowly than others. We experimentally demonstrate a suite of new techniques to identify and guide light through the more temporally stable channels within dynamic scattering media—threading optical fields around multiple highly dynamic pockets hidden at unknown locations inside. We first show how the temporal fluctuations in scattered light can be suppressed by optimizing the wavefront of the incident field. Next, we demonstrate how to accelerate this procedure by two orders of magnitude using a physically realized form of adjoint gradient descent optimization. Finally, we show how the time-averaged transmission matrix reveals a basis of temporal fluctuation eigenchannels that can be used to increase the stability of beam shaping through time-varying complex media such as bending multimode fibres. Our work has potential future applications to a variety of technologies reliant on general wave phenomena subject to dynamic conditions, from optics to microwaves and acoustics. Guiding light around dynamic regions of a scattering object by means of propagating light through the most ‘stable’ channel within a moving scattering medium is demonstrated, potentially advancing fields such as deep imaging in living biological tissue and optical communications through turbulent air and underwater.