2018/04/30 by Philipp del Hougne, Geoffroy Lerosey · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.class-ph #physics.app-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevx.8.041037
published as Phys. Rev. X 8, 041037 (2018) · 13 pages including 5 figures + 7 pages Supplemental Material
arxiv created 2018/08/21 · arxiv updated 2018/12/05
In sight of fundamental thermal limits on further substantial performance improvements of modern digital computational processing units, wave-based analog computation is becoming an enticing alternative. A wave, as it propagates through a carefully tailored medium, performs the desired computational operation. Yet, the necessary designs are so intricate that experimental demonstrations will necessitate further technological advances. Here, we show that, counterintuitively, the carefully tailored medium can be replaced with a random medium, subject to an appropriate shaping of the incident wave front. Using tunable metasurface reflect-arrays, we demonstrate our concept experimentally in a chaotic microwave cavity. We conclude that off-the-shelf wireless communication infrastructure in combination with a simple reflect-array suffices to perform analog computation with Wi-Fi waves reverberating in a room.