Energy transport in diffusive waveguides

Abstract

The guiding and transport of energy, for example, of electromagnetic waves, underpins many modern technologies, ranging from long-distance optical fibre telecommunications to on-chip optical processors. Traditionally, a mechanism is required that exponentially localizes the waves or particles in the confinement region, such as total internal reflection at a boundary. Here we introduce a waveguiding mechanism that relies on a different origin for the exponential confinement and that arises owing to the physics of diffusion. We demonstrate this concept using light and show that the photon density can propagate as a guided mode along a core structure embedded in a scattering opaque material, enhancing light transmission by orders of magnitude and along non-trivial, such as curved, trajectories. This waveguiding mechanism can also occur naturally, for example, in the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain and along tendons in the human body, and is to be expected in other systems that follow the same physics such as neutron diffusion. Waveguides—often based on total internal reflection—underpin many photonic technologies, including fibre networks for broadband communications. Now a different type of waveguide based on physical diffusion in a scattering medium is demonstrated.