Measuring Large Optical Transmission Matrices of Disordered Media

We report a measurement of the large optical transmission matrix (TM) of a complex turbid medium. The TM is acquired using polarization-sensitive, full-field interferometric microscopy equipped with a rotating galvanometer mirror. It is represented with respect to input and output bases of optical m...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yu, Hyeonseung, Hillman, Timothy Robert, Choi, Wonshik, Lee, Ji Oon, Feld, Michael S., Park, YongKeun, Dasari, Ramachandra Rao
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistry
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/84984
Description
Summary:We report a measurement of the large optical transmission matrix (TM) of a complex turbid medium. The TM is acquired using polarization-sensitive, full-field interferometric microscopy equipped with a rotating galvanometer mirror. It is represented with respect to input and output bases of optical modes, which correspond to plane wave components of the respective illumination and transmitted waves. The modes are sampled so finely in angular spectrum space that their number exceeds the total number of resolvable modes for the illuminated area of the sample. As such, we investigate the singular value spectrum of the TM in order to detect evidence of open transmission channels, predicted by random-matrix theory. Our results comport with theoretical expectations, given the experimental limitations of the system. We consider the impact of these limitations on the usefulness of transmission matrices in optical measurements.