The first International Workshop on Control of Quantum and Classical Waves in Complex Media will be held in Ein Gedi Hotel, near the Dead Sea, on February 17th-20th, 2020.
The goal of the workshop is to bring together the key players of the complex quantum and classical wave community, to share the recent developments of their research. The program will encourage mutual discussions between all participants, and in particular between senior scientists and students.This workshop will bring together researchers from a wide range of fields such as optics, condensed-matter or atomic physics, seismology, acoustics, from theory to experiments. The complex systems under study range from photonic crystals, to disordered systems, strongly localized media, platonic crystals, metamaterials, quasi-crystals, cold atoms, complex urban environments, biological tissues, tree forests, …
This conference will be dedicated to the memory of Prof. Yaron Silberberg, an exceptional physicist and an esteemed colleague from Weizmann Institute, who passed away in April 21, 2019.
Scope of the Workshop
When light propagates through clouds, thick organic tissues or photonic crystals, when elastic waves meet rugged earth landscapes or structured thin plates, when RF or micro-waves traverse a complex urban environment, a resonant metamaterial or a random collection of dielectric spheres, all these waves will inevitably experience multiple scattering. At mesoscopic scales where coherence is preserved and wave interferences cannot be ignored, universal wave phenomena are predicted. The fundamental understanding of wave propagation in complex media has allowed important progress towards the control of waves in these systems. Here the scattering is not anymore an hindrance but an opportunity to increase our ability to overcome the limitations imposed by Nature: Focusing beyond the diffraction limit, imaging through opaque media, hauling enormous quantity of information, protecting edge modes, confining wave energy, versatile lasing without optical cavities, making transparent an otherwise strongly scattering medium, protecting buildings from destructive seismic waves, are few examples of the new functionalities and abilities offered by the interaction of waves with complex media.
Recently, the ever-growing demand to deliver exotic quantum states in real life scenarios has lead to the exploration how quantum states of light propagation in complex media. Quantum communications, for instance, require transmitting entangled photon-pairs through the turbulent atmosphere, to or from satellites. In quantum imaging, we need to learn how to keep quantum states of light as they propagate through scattering layers, in order to keep their super-resolution capabilities. More generally, photonic quantum technologies can greatly benefit from improving our understanding of how quantum states of light can be controlled in complex media.
Topics
- Focusing and imaging through opaque media
- Wavefront shaping of Quantum and Classical Waves
- Coherent control in complex media
- Transmission matrix and Wigner-Smith time delay operator
- Manipulation of modes in non-Hermitian complex systems
- Non-conventional wave control in metamaterials, topological insulators, quasicrystals, hyperuniform disordered systems, …
- Mesoscopic phenomena with quantum light
- Quantum communications through turbulent atmosphere