Programming balanced optical beam splitters in white paint

Abstract: Wavefront shaping allows for ultimate control of light propagation in multiple-scattering media by adaptive manipulation of incident waves. We shine two separate wavefront-shaped beams on a layer of dry white paint to create two enhanced output speckle spots of equal intensity. We experimentally confirm by interference measurements that the output speckle spots are almost correlated like the two outputs of an ideal balanced beam splitter. The observed deviations from the phase behavior of an ideal beam splitter are analyzed with a transmission matrix model. Our experiments demonstrate that wavefront shaping in multiple-scattering media can be used to approximate the functionality of linear optical devices with multiple inputs and outputs.