The Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Freiburg

Announcement for the next

Informal Seminar

Dr. Ivo Vellekoop

University of Twente, Enschede, Holland

Opaque lenses: controlling light propagation in disordered materials

White materials, such as white paint, bone and brain tissue, scatter light. Light that propagates in such materials will become diffuse (i.e. it loses directionality). For a long time, it was thought that diffusion of light is irreversible. However, we have shown experimentally that diffusion of light can be reversed. By shaping the incident light beam, we have made normally opaque objects, such as an eggshell, focus light. These opaque objects focus the transmitted light as sharply as a lens. Additionally, light was focused deep inside opaque objects. I will present the basic ideas, the apparatus and algorithms, and our experimental results. In addition, I will discuss some potential applications of our methods.

Host: Dr. Clemens Boucsein