Entanglement-enabled image transmission through complex media

Abstract

Scattering in complex media scrambles light, thus obscuring images and limiting applications from astronomy to microscopy. Existing computational and wavefront-shaping methods treat scattering as a linear optical-wave inversion problem that aims to render the medium transparent by inverting the scattering process. As classical approaches, they do not account for the quantum nature of the incident field. Here, we demonstrate a quantum-entanglement-based method that enables selective image transmission through complex media. The medium is effectively turned into a quantum-classical image filter via wavefront shaping - images encoded on an entangled two-photon state are transmitted faithfully, while those carried by classical light remain fully scattered and unreadable. This method exploits a property of quantum entanglement - the preservation of photon correlations across multiple measurement bases - that has no classical counterpart. Therefore, we establish an approach for controlling light in complex media by tailoring solutions to the quantum properties of the input state, with potential applications in secure information transmission by rendering channels opaque to classical signals while preserving the quantum link.