Image transport through a disordered optical fiber mediated by transverse Anderson localization

摘要

Transverse Anderson localization of light allows localizedoptical-beam-transport through a transversely-disordered andlongitudinally-invariant medium. Its successful implementation in disorderedoptical fibers recently resulted in the propagation of localized beams of radiicomparable with that of conventional optical fibers. We present what is, to thebest of our knowledge, the first demonstration of optical image transport usingtransverse Anderson localization of light. The image transport quality obtainedin the polymer disordered optical fiber is comparable with or better than someof the best commercially available multicore image fibers with less pixelationand higher contrast. It is argued that considerable improvement in imagetransport quality can be obtained in a disordered fiber made from a glassmatrix with near wavelength-size randomly distributed air-holes with anair-hole fill-fraction of $50\%$. Our results open the way to device-levelimplementation of the transverse Anderson localization of light with potentialapplications in biological and medical imaging.