Exploiting tailored disorder in dielectric nanosurfaces to maximize their information capacity

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Dielectric nanosurfaces imprint information onto an incident field by spatially varying its phase/amplitude deterministically. The highest efficiency is achieved if the strongly scattering objects are made from high-permittivity materials. If operated at their duality point, perfect transmission is achieved. This unlocks a plethora of exciting application in lighting and imaging devices, ultra-thin display technologies, for wavefront manipulation, and beam shaping. However, there is no free lunch and the ability to control light disruptively comes at the expense of a heavily pronounced long-range interaction. This prohibits to encode even a decent amount of information if these scatterers were arranged periodically. In the first SPP funding period, we explored how disorder in the arrangement of these scatterers suppresses this long-range interaction and studied the impact of disorder on the optical response of nanosurfaces. In joint efforts, we mastered the basic properties of disordered nanosurfaces and unravelled unexpected phenomena, e.g. a disorder induced phase transition in the response of the nanosurface. Altogether, our work opens the doors for a plethora of investigations in the second funding period.The common theme of our research strands in the second funding period is the maximization of the information capacity encoded into our nanosurfaces. This concerns both the number of independent channels encoded within the same area of the nanosurface but also the information density encoded in each channel.In a first research strand, we concentrate on wavefront shaping nanosurfaces where the information density is enhanced by explicitly exploiting disorder. The disorder is spatially tailored to adjust the local amplitude and phase of the transmitted light. This full control within a single material layer will implement exact and not just approximate holograms. We also aim to exploit the spectral/angular dispersive response to implement holograms at different wavelengths/illumination fields. In a second research strand, these abilities are used to tailor the diffusive scattering in selected demonstrators. We study devices that redirect the incident light in a continuous fashion and probe to which extent a nanosurface can mimic the response from an ordinary 3D random media. This will answer the question into which tiny space the information from a bulk media can be encoded.In a third research strand, we question to which extent we can learn from nature to perceive nanosurfaces that offer a desired response. In all but particularly in this last research strand we expect to work together with other partners from the SPP and to contribute to its overarching goals. Our work on studying light propagation in disordered nanosurfaces combines scientific challenge, intellectual beauty, and practical utility. We safely anticipate that our insights contribute simultaneously to the wider developments of optics and photonics and material sciences.