Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Research in the field of complex optics studies the propagation of light through complex media. A complex medium is a disordered or multi component medium (e.g. fog or arrays of nanoparticles) where a light wave incurs multiple scattering events, causing an output field which - though complicated - is dependent on the input light and the structure within the medium. In addition to this, complex optics looks at the propagation of light in systems, such as multimode fibres, which are characterised by a large number of interacting modes in their core. The understanding of such phenomena have recently been the centre of research within the optics community because of their profound implications in imaging as well as optical communications applications.
This Collection welcomes the latest research in the field of complex optics, looking not only at the physics of multiple scattering but also at how these physical principles apply to practical applications.