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Photonics

Random sudoku light

Nature volume 526, pages 643–644 (2015)Cite this article

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A clever approach has been used to imprint a phase pattern on a laser beam. The pattern is not only random at each point, but also depends on information stored elsewhere in the pattern.

Imagine that you are stuck in traffic. What determines your options? Only the car directly in front of you: if it travels slowly, you drive slowly; if it stops, so must you. However, your decisions are independent of all other drivers' decisions. This observation has profound physical consequences, because it leads to the distinction between two classes of random physical system, known as Markovian and non-Markovian after the mathematician Andrey Markov1. Traffic jams are Markovian systems, and, so far, this has also been the case for light that has a random spatial distribution in intensity or phase. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Fischer et al.2 report the first experimental demonstration of non-Markovian light.

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Figure 1: Non-Markovian light.

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References

  1. Markov, A. A. Proceedings of the Physical and Mathematical Society at the University of Kazan 2nd edn, Vol. 15, 135–156 (1906).

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  2. Fischer, R. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 073901 (2015).

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  3. Fairchild, M. D. Color Appearance Models 2nd edn, 65 (Wiley, 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Toni Eichelkraut and Alexander Szameit are at the Institute of Applied Physics, Abbe Centre of Photonics, University of Jena, 07749 Jena, Germany.,

    Toni Eichelkraut & Alexander Szameit

Authors
  1. Toni Eichelkraut
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  2. Alexander Szameit
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Correspondence to Alexander Szameit.

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Eichelkraut, T., Szameit, A. Random sudoku light. Nature 526, 643–644 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/526643a

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