Optimal Multiplexing of Spatially Encoded Information across Custom-Tailored Configurations of a Metasurface-Tunable Chaotic Cavity
Résumé
Tunable disorder-engineered materials offer the opportunity to add functionalities for finely tailored dynamic wave control to applications inevitably or voluntarily based on random materials. Exciting prospects are tailored channel matrices that optimally multiplex information on multiple incoming spatial channels across multiple spatial or configurational channels on the receive side. Here we demonstrate the latter at microwave frequencies based on a chaotic cavity equipped with tunable reflect-array metasurfaces that are configured using a judiciously tailored coding sequence. The results have immediate technological relevance in computational imaging and sensing, since they enable the single-port acquisition of large-aperture spatial information with the lowest possible latency and processing burden. A reduction of the necessary number of measurements by a factor of 2.5 compared with state-of-the-art approaches is found in in situ experiments. The proposed concept and platform set the stage for "on-demand" realizations of desired channel-matrix properties and provide fundamental insights into the role of engineered disorder in the interplay of different types of degrees of freedom in mesoscopic physics. The principle is also expected to inspire novel multimode-fiber-based tailored-multiplexing schemes in the optical domain.