Publication in Optics Express highlighted as Editor's Pick

We are happy to share the news that our article has been highlighted as an Editor's Pick, which "serve(s) to highlight articles with excellent scientific quality and are representative of the work taking place in a specific field".

 

The study of the optical transmission matrix (TM) of a sample reveals important statistics of light transport through it. The accuracy of the statistics depends strongly on the orthogonality and completeness of the basis in which the TM is measured. While conventional experimental methods suffer from sampling effects and optical aberrations, we use a basis of Bessel modes of the first kind to faithfully recover the singular values, eigenvalues and eigenmodes of light propagation through a finite thickness of air. This is a novel, robust and easy-to-implement procedure for open 3D samples with a slab-type geometry which, additionally, corrects for misalignment and aberrations in the experimental apparatus. It is therefore highly relevant for any future experiment that measures the TM of simple and complex media for probing and understanding mesoscopic correlations and the fundamental transport physics of such systems.