Allard P Mosk

Open channels in scattering media: Seeing the light inside

Random scattering of light, which causes the opaqueness of paper, paint and biological tissue is an obstacle to imaging and focusing of light. At the same time scattering is a phenomenon of basic physical interest as it allows the study of fascinating interference effects such as open transport channels, which enable lossless transport of waves through strongly scattering materials. The transmission of these open channels remains high even for a thick sample, while their statistical occurrence offers a new way to measure the scattering strength of a material. Individual open channels can be elucidated by repeated phase conjugation, and this opens them up to detailed spectroscopy measurements, allowing space-time mapping of these remarkable transmission properties in three-dimensional optical systems.

Allard Mosk (1970) started his physics career in ultracold atomic gases with work in Amsterdam (PhD 1994), Heidelberg and Paris, performing the first observation of a Feshbach resonance in Li, and of photoassociation of H. In 2003 he joined the nanophotonics group of Ad Lagendijk and Willem Vos at the University of Twente where he pioneered wavefront shaping methods to focus and image through strongly scattering media. Since 2015 he holds a chair at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, where he studies statistical properties of light in complex scattering media with a view on imaging.