TY - JOUR
T1 - Perfect Absorption in a Disordered Medium with Programmable Meta-Atom Inclusions
AU - F. Imani, Mohammadreza
AU - Smith, David R.
AU - del Hougne, Philipp
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR; No. FA9550-18-1-0187). P.d.H. was supported in part by the French “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” under reference ANR-17-ASTR-0017.
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR; No. FA9550‐18‐1‐0187). P.d.H. was supported in part by the French “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” under reference ANR‐17‐ASTR‐0017.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Wiley-VCH GmbH
PY - 2020/12/22
Y1 - 2020/12/22
N2 - Achieving the very special condition of perfect absorption (PA) in a complex scattering enclosure promises to enable a wealth of applications in secure communication, precision sensing, wireless power transfer, analog signal processing, and random lasing. Consequently, a lot of recent research effort is dedicated to proposing wave-front shaping protocols to implement coherent PA in complex scattering environments with tunable localized absorption as well as a tunable excitation frequency. Here, the conceptually different route of solely tweaking the randomness of the complex scattering environment in order to achieve PA is proposed. An experimental proof-of-concept in the microwave domain is provided where the randomness of a 3D chaotic cavity is tuned with programmable meta-atom inclusions. The achievability and extreme sensitivity of the PA condition are systematically investigated. The presented technique can impose a PA condition at over hundred distinct frequencies within a small frequency band, enabling the proposal and experimental demonstration of a concrete practical application: receiver-powered secure wireless communication in a complex scattering enclosure. The presented fundamentally new perspective on PA applies to all types of wave phenomena; the experimental results foreshadow the large potential of this novel tool for minute wave control in sensing, communication, and energy transfer.
AB - Achieving the very special condition of perfect absorption (PA) in a complex scattering enclosure promises to enable a wealth of applications in secure communication, precision sensing, wireless power transfer, analog signal processing, and random lasing. Consequently, a lot of recent research effort is dedicated to proposing wave-front shaping protocols to implement coherent PA in complex scattering environments with tunable localized absorption as well as a tunable excitation frequency. Here, the conceptually different route of solely tweaking the randomness of the complex scattering environment in order to achieve PA is proposed. An experimental proof-of-concept in the microwave domain is provided where the randomness of a 3D chaotic cavity is tuned with programmable meta-atom inclusions. The achievability and extreme sensitivity of the PA condition are systematically investigated. The presented technique can impose a PA condition at over hundred distinct frequencies within a small frequency band, enabling the proposal and experimental demonstration of a concrete practical application: receiver-powered secure wireless communication in a complex scattering enclosure. The presented fundamentally new perspective on PA applies to all types of wave phenomena; the experimental results foreshadow the large potential of this novel tool for minute wave control in sensing, communication, and energy transfer.
KW - medium disorder
KW - perfect absorption
KW - programmable metamaterial
KW - secure communication
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U2 - 10.1002/adfm.202005310
DO - 10.1002/adfm.202005310
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091374884
SN - 1616-301X
VL - 30
JO - Advanced Functional Materials
JF - Advanced Functional Materials
IS - 52
M1 - 2005310
ER -