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The show must go on

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 92–93 (2022)Cite this article

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Researchers reveal an effect in random media, called coherent back-emission, in which directional memory of the incoming light field persists after incident radiation ceases to be present.

When light enters a dense disordered medium, it is multiply scattered. Despite the enormous complexity of this process, a very accurate, physically sound and tractable approach is to consider that light intensity undergoes a diffusive process. Under this approximation, or the more elaborate radiative transfer approach, we can explain many well-known optical phenomena, such as white paint’s opacity and milk’s turbidity. Here Ohm’s law, known from electronic transport, applies to a broad set of conditions for any diffusive wave transport1.

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Fig. 1: Coherent backscattering cone versus enhanced coherent back-emission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Frank Scheffold & Luis S. Froufe-Pérez

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  1. Frank Scheffold
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  2. Luis S. Froufe-Pérez
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Correspondence to Luis S. Froufe-Pérez.

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Scheffold, F., Froufe-Pérez, L.S. The show must go on. Nat. Photon. 16, 92–93 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00949-x

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