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Peering into a Distorted Universe
Christopher Barsi
Department of Electrical Engineering
After propagating through exotic, nonlinear materials, light becomes distorted and unreadable, as different light rays "talk" to each other and mix up their information. Through nonlinear digital holography, this wave mixing, measured in the self-distorted image (left), can be undone to reconstruct the original signal (right). These experimental images demonstrate the ability of the method to reconstruct both the image intensity and phase, which is measured to within a fraction of a wavelength. This technique provides new possibilities in imaging and nonlinear physics applications, such as material characterization, improved imaging resolution, and sub-wavelength lithography.