Disordered Anderson Localization Optical Fibers for Image Transport—A Review

Abstract

Disordered optical fibers show novel waveguiding properties, enabled by the transverse Anderson localization of light, and are used for image transport. The strong transverse scattering from the transversely disordered refractive index structure results in transversely confined modes that can freely propagate in the longitudinal direction. In some sense, an Anderson localization disordered fiber behave like a large-core multimode optical fiber, with the advantage, that most modes are highly localized in the transverse plane, so any point in the cross section of the fiber can be used for localized beam transport. This property has been used for high-quality transportation of intensity patterns and images in these optical fibers. This review covers the basics and the history of the transverse Anderson localization in disordered optical fibers and captures the recent progress in imaging applications using these optical fibers.A. Mafi is with the

Glass: The carrier of light—Part II—A brief look into the future of optical fiber

“…The coreless nature of TALOFs that removes this pixilation issue has been shown to transport higher fidelity images than traditional endoscopy fiber structures. [137][138][139][140] More recently, the unique properties of TALOFs have been employed in a range of new applications including random fiber lasers 141 and novel nonlinear fibers based on four-wave mixing. 142…”

Advances in the fabrication of disordered transverse Anderson localizing optical fibers [Invited]

“…In general, it is desirable for these fibers to be designed for the smallest average localized beam diameter. It has been noted that the statistical distribution of the localized beam diameters in TALOFs follows a nearly Poisson-like distribution [23,26,38,39]. Therefore, any attempt in reducing the average mode field diameter also reduces the modeto-mode diameter variations and results in a more uniform behavior across the fiber cross section.…”

“…Of course, strongest transverse scattering is achieved for a 50-50 ratio in the design proposed by De Raedt et al [20]. There has been some unsettled questions and uncertainties regarding a judicious choice of the random pixel size [23,39,40]-those designs that target the pixel size to be around half the free-space wavelength, at least for ∆n ≈ 0.1 − 0.5, seem to be successful. Of course, in structures that somewhat deviate from that of De Raedt et al such as the air-glass optical fiber by Chen and Li [30], the rules of design are likely different and must be studied in detail using appropriate statistical methods [38,39].…”

“…Discussions on the applications of TALOFs, especially for imaging and random lasing can be found in Refs. [18,[23][24][25] and will also be discussed briefly here.…”

Learning-Based Image Transport Through Disordered Optical Fibers With Transverse Anderson Localization

“…Instead of relying on conventional optical fibers and algorithms, another avenue to go beyond the barrier would be exploring new waveguiding physics as well as resort to a learningbased approach to tackle the inverse imaging problem. Recently, the emerging transverse Anderson localizing optical fiber (ALOF) provided a lot of evidence that transversely random fiber structures can be utilized as astonishing robust and highquality imaging carriers [42][43][44][45]. ALOFs can potentially supersede conventional optical fibers based on their counterintuitive but intriguing properties: highly multimode systems with single-mode-like behaviors and wavelengthindependent point spread functions [46][47][48][49].…”