ALP Seminar: Optical machine learning exploring disorder

Light propagation in complex media, such as paint, clouds, or biological tissues, is a very challenging phenomenon, encompassing fundamental aspects in mesoscopic and statistical physics, transport, material science, etc. It is also of utmost applied interest, in particular for imaging. Wavefront shaping, the ability to manipulate light using e.g. spatial light modulators, has in the last decade revolutionized the ability to image through or in complex media.

In this seminar, I will discuss how computational tools and machine learning algorithms allows to develop further wavefront shaping, and show how the same complexity can be leveraged for a variety of optical computing tasks, ranging from classification to time-series predictions to optimization problems. Complex Light scattering thus provides a compelling analog platform to tackle modern AI problems, at scale.